Dr. Conrad Tucker is currently serving as a science and policy fellow in the Foresight, Strategy, and Risks Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security.

Dr. Tucker holds a joint appointment as associate professor in engineering design and industrial and manufacturing engineering at the Pennsylvania State University. He is also affiliate faculty in computer science and engineering. Dr. Tucker is the director of the Design Analysis Technology Advancement (D.A.T.A) Laboratory. His research focuses on the design and optimization of complex systems through the acquisition, integration, and mining of large scale, disparate data. Three characteristics of engineered systems that Dr. Tucker’s research group explores are: i) the ability to sense an environment, ii) the ability to characterize relevant system attributes, and iii) the ability to learn and predict future states that aid decision makers. Through Dr. Tucker’s research, the concept of large scale social media networks serving as low cost, scalable sensor systems is a departure from traditional perceptions of social media networks as merely being platforms for disseminating content and connecting individuals. Dr. Tucker’s research group has utilized social media platforms to quantify cyber security threats, train machine learning algorithms, and model and predict user interactions and behavior.

Dr. Tucker has served as principal investigator (PI)/Co-PI on several National Science Foundation (NSF) funded grants and is currently serving as PI and site director of an NSF Industry/University Cooperative Research Center (I/UCRC) at Penn State. Dr. Tucker is part of the inaugural class of the Gates Millennium Scholars (GMS) program. In February 2016, Dr. Tucker was invited by National Academy of Engineering (NAE) President Dr. Dan Mote, to serve as a member of the Advisory Committee for the NAE Frontiers of Engineering Education. Dr. Tucker is the recipient of the American Society of the Engineering Education’s (ASEE) Summer Faculty Fellowship Program (SFFP) award and conducted research at the Air Force Institute of Technology at the Wright Patterson Air Force Base during Summer 2014 and Summer 2015.