About Me
Who I Am
I (he/him) am an Associate Professor in the College of Information Sciences and Technology at Penn State, where I lead the Human Language Technologies Lab. My research spans natural language processing, privacy, security, and computational social science.
Prior to becoming faculty, I held postdoctoral positions at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Edinburgh. I received my PhD in Computer Science from the University of Maryland in 2011.
Contacting Me
You can reach me at shomir _at_ psu.edu. If you are on Penn State's University Park campus, you can stop by my office at E310 in the Westgate Building.
Students taking my classes may benefit from browsing my Guide for Interacting With Faculty before contacting me.
Students interested in joining my lab: I sometimes have openings for PhD students, MS students, and undergraduates to work on projects related to natural language processing or privacy. If you're interested in working with me, first consult my Guide for Joining My Lab for how to contact me and what information to include.
Curriculum Vitae
Latest News
I also sometimes post news and thoughts to Bluesky and LinkedIn.
2025-03-27: I'm listed in this Penn State News article as a recent participant in Penn State Emerging Academic Leaders (PSEAL), a professional development program for mid-career faculty interested in leadership positions.
2025-03-11: I gave a keynote talk at the Carnegie Bosch Institute Symposium on Responsible & Sustainable AI in Pittsburgh.
2025-03-02: I've posted Where I'm From, an article that answers a frequent question.
2025-02-07: Congratulations to HLT lab PhD student Pranav Venkit, who passed his thesis defense today! Pranav has accepted an offer to join Salesforce in San Francisco as a Research Scientist.
2025-02-02: I was a live guest on "Morning Wave" on South Korea's BeFM (90.5 FM and webcast). I spoke on a segment titled "DeepSeek Shakes Up AI World".
2025-01-31: I will serve as the interim program coordinator for IST's Data Sciences degree, from February 1 until May 5.
2025-01-30: Several colleagues and I comment on DeepSeek in this Penn State News article.
2025-01-27: Here's a Penn State News article about the Dagstuhl seminar that I recently organized.
2025-01-18: For the benefit of junior faculty, I've released my narrative statement for tenure and promotion along with some companion notes.
2025-01-18: I was a live guest on "Let's Talk" on WFXS (98.7 FM). Host Scott Geesey and I had a 45-minute conversation about artificial intelligence and its impacts on society.
2025-01-10: I led the organizing team of Dagstuhl Seminar 25021: Grand Challenges for Research on Privacy Documents. Thanks to everyone who attended.
2024-12-06: I gave the keynote talk at Penn State's 17th Annual Postdoctoral Research Symposium. Here's a recording of my talk.
2024-11-05: I'm pleased to share that our CSCW paper "Race and Privacy in Broadcast Police Communications" (preprint) has received a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Recognition from the conference.
2024-09-26: I gave a keynote talk at SEPLN.
2024-08-15: I gave the keynote talk at the Private NLP workshop at ACL.
2024-08-15: I'm pleased to share that my TeachingNLP 2024 paper "Documenting the Unwritten Curriculum of Student Research" received the workshop's Best Teaching Material award. This is my first publication about my advice pages.
2024-06-06: I'm honored to be selected for the Computing Research Association's Future Leaders Program. Here's a Penn State News article about it.
2024-05-28: I've been selected to participate in the Penn State Emerging Academic Leaders (PSEAL) program.
For older news, check the archive.