UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The Penn State Office of the Senior Vice President for Research has announced the appointment of Guido Cervone as the director of the Institute for Computational and Data Sciences (ICDS) at Penn State. Cervone has served as the interim director of ICDS since April 2024.
“Dr. Cervone has ably guided ICDS through a year of major advances, including expanded high-performance computing access and new interdisciplinary research initiatives,” said Andrew Read, senior vice president for research, Penn State. “His leadership sets the stage for ICDS to further elevate Penn State’s national stature in artificial intelligence (AI), simulation science and big-data innovation.”
In his capacity as director, Cervone will:
- Drive strategic alignment between Penn State’s major research initiatives and cutting-edge computational infrastructure, including the Roar supercomputing cluster
- Expand the co-hire faculty model, fostering cross-college partnerships in data science and AI
- Strengthen research support services and funding mechanisms for early-career researchers, including programs such as the Rising Researchers Initiative
“I am honored to step into this role and to build upon ICDS’s impressive foundation,” Cervone said. “My goal is to focus on research, and give investigators access to a thriving ecosystem and the best tools available to accelerate results in the sciences, engineering and humanities.”
Cervone is a professor of geography, of meteorology and of atmospheric science at Penn State, and is a member of the Geoinformatics and Earth Observation Laboratory in the Department of Geography. He is also an adjunct professor at the Scuola Superiore Sant’ Anna, in Pisa, Italy. Cervone was recently named chair of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Annual Meeting program committee
Cervone received his doctorate from George Mason University in computational science and informatics with focus on AI in 2005. He has pioneered methods in spatiotemporal data mining and environmental hazard ‑analysis.
ICDS is Penn State’s cross-disciplinary hub for data-intensive research and high-performance computing. ICDS supports investigators across colleges and departments, leading computational based research and maintaining Penn State high performance computing cluster. Through co-hire faculty, core engineering staff and shared infrastructure, ICDS amplifies Penn State’s research footprint across AI, digital twins, computational, data and quantum science.