Classes

IST 296 – Independent Study

Prof: Isaac Brewer

This was when Ali and I discovered what we wanted to do as our research with visualization. We started the class learning about hacking tools and how to use them and what they could do. After a while, we decided we had learned all that we wanted to because we did not want to be technical people. It was then that we decided to look at Beaver Stadium and our Visualization ideas were off.

SRA 211 – Threat of Terrorism and Crime

Prof: Col. Jake Graham

The “Grand Experiment” for the college. The first half of the class was lecture based where Col. Jake Graham, former Marine and flew the President around, would teach us based on his first hand knowledge of the Threat of Terrorism and Crime. We did semantic labeling exercises, entity identification, link analysis, and mission analysis. The second half of the class was a red/blue cell experiment. I was a part of the Red Cell, we helped to create the plot that the Blue Cells were trying to figure out. I was a writer. I wrote up background reports on the characters and a fake president itinerary to release to the Blue Cells. I have a post about this class and one about Red/Blue cells coming. Col. Graham is an extremely experienced professor and I think he’ll be helping students out for years to come.  Below is some of my work from that class.  Included is a paper on Social Network Analysis and a paper on the definitions of Terrorism and Crime.

Social Network Analysis

Definition Paper

Mapping a Terrorist Cell Poster (Below)

Econ 002 – Micro-Economics

Prof: Dirk Mateer

I read on ratemyprofessor that Dirk Mateer was the one and only when it came to Econ and I’m glad I listened. He taught a 725 person hall like it was one on one. It seems like he knows everything there is to know about Econ. He offers a lot of extra credit, but grades the gen ed project pretty difficult. Overall, it was a great class and a great experience, especially saying that more people were in that lecture than my entire high school.

IST 402 – Google Online Marketing Challenge

Prof: Jim Jansen

This year, Google ran its first Google Online Marketing Challenge. It pitted teams from across the world in a test to see who could run the best ad campaign. You know those sponsored ads that come up when you google something? Those. My team came in second place in the class and I can honestly say it was a great opportunity. It gave everyone in the class a valuable skill set for the business world in online marketing. I recommend IST students take this as their 402 next spring because it is a very unique experience.

Update: The group we finished second to won the United States competition and got to travel to the Google Complex.  My group were finalists for the region as well.  I was shocked when I saw this, it is simply amazing that we did so well.  Professor Jansen should take a lot of this credit, he walked us through every step and taught us everything we needed to know.  Congrats to everyone!

Arabic 001, 002, 003

Professors: Riadh Bounatirou, Muhamed al-Anweh, Eman Ahmed

Taking Arabic was a different experience from normal classes.  I took 1 and 2 over the summer in the PSU Summer Intensive Languages courses.  This means that I took Arabic from 8am till Noon everyday for 8 straight weeks.  It was exhaustive to say the least.  Having just completed Arabic 3, I can say that while the Summer classes were worth it, I liked taking it over 15 weeks much better.  Right now, I can piece together sentences, describe things and actions, and hold a decent conversation.  I am taking Arabic 4 in the Spring and am looking forward to the challenge.  Below is a presentation from Arabic 2 on Anwar Sadat.

Muhammed Anwar al-Sadat Presentation

SRA 221: Computer Security

Prof: Anna Squicciarini

This class was something new for me.  Professor Squicciarini taught us about firewalls, VPN, Intrusion Dectection, Authentication, Biometrics, and other security mechanisms of the sort.  Every Thursday night, we would meet in a lab where we could work with hacking tools and other tools used in the previously mentioned fields.  To sum up the class, we did a vulnerability analysis on a fictitious corporation, TwoHands, and implemented a corporation wide security system.  Below are the documents from the project.

Vulnerability Analysis: Term Project Part 1

Topology: Term Project Part 1

Security Solution Implementation: Term Project Part 2

Topology: Term Project Part 2 (Below)

SRA 231 – Decision Theory

Prof: Isaac Brewer

This was a fun class.  In the beginning, we read Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions, by Gary Klein.  We learned about intuition, cognition, team metacognition, mental simulation, and story telling to analyze how a decision is made.  Then, we broke into groups of three and started to receive reports on a fictitious terrorist attack.  We would map each week of reports in Analyst Notebook to get the jist of the overall plot.  It was better than the SRA 211 plot, only because it was on a much smaller scale.  Our group would have saved America by arresting the terrorists before they could attack cruise chips with the black plague as developed in Russia.  However, we did not realize that the balck plague was the biological agent.  Finally, we had to use Analyst Notebook to map out a single event in world history.  I chose the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan(below), mainly because it coincided with my History 473 research paper.  I was very frustrated with the program itself because of its instability, but overall I think the project was great and turned out very well.

Mapping Project

PL SC 014 – International Politics

Prof: Errol Henderson

HIST 473 – The Contemporary Middle East

Prof: Janina Safran

This was a really beneficial class for me to take. I didn’t really need to take the class to graduate, but I found the material to be profoundly interesting and pertinent. The class followed the two textbooks very closely, as we waded through the rich history of the Middle East. I learned how each country came to be, how leaders and wars shaped the landscape we see today. I learned more about the Israeli/Palestinian Conflict than I ever had before. The class did a great job laying out the foundation for understanding why events are happening today, based on the history of the country they occurred in. The Iranian Revolution, Egyptian wars, how Saudi Arabia came to be, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, and U.S. interest in the region are some examples of topics covered. The professor was extremely knowledgeable in the subject matter, and it showed in her lectures. My research paper, “The Radicalization of Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri” is currently being felt out for publication, so it will not be posted at this time.

SRA 311 – Risk Management

Prof: Will McGill

The most beneficial Security and Risk Analysis Class so far has been SRA 311. Professor McGill teaches the subject matter like he created it (some of which he did). Every day we learned about a different arm of the risk world, whether it was decision trees, the risk equation, fault nodes, or game theory. Before taking this class, I didn’t really know much about Risk Analysis, even though it was my major. Now I am way more knowledgeable. For the final project, my group created DEDACT, which was covered in this blog post.

SRA 471 – Informatics, Risk, and the Post-Modern World

Prof: John Horgan

This class is accurately described as, like having a guest lecturer every single day. Dr. John Horgan is an expert in the field of terrorism. His lectures were chalk full of cutting edge information in the field. He talked about the Saudi Deradicalization Facility, what the difference between crime and terrorism is (or isn’t), made us research current event topics such as the Somali population in Minnesota, and the idea of ‘The New Terrorism.’ We read Boaz Ganor’s The Counterterrorism Puzzle, along with Terrorism and Counter-Terrorism: Understanding the New Security Environment, by Howard, Sawyer, and Bajena. Two books I plan on keeping, and quoting, for the foreseeable future. Everything about this class made it easy to call it my favorite so far at Penn State.