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College of Engineering and Applied Sciences
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HomeAdministrationCore FacultyLori Scarlatos

Lori Scarlatos

PhotoAssociate Professor

Graduate Program Director

Ph.D., Stony Brook University

Courses Offered:

  • EST 205 - Introduction to Technological Design
  • EST 207 - Interaction Design
  • EST 310 / ISE 340 - Game Design
  • EST 573 - Interactive Multimedia Curriculum Design and Development
  • EST 579 - Educational Games

Dr. Lori Scarlatos is an Associate Professor of Educational Technology in the department of Technology and Society at Stony Brook University. Her research focuses on how computers can help people to see, understand, and learn. Specific research topics include educational games and simulations; human-computer interaction, with an emphasis on tangible user interfaces and physical computing; computer graphics, including level-of-detail surface modeling and animation systems; information visualization; multimedia; and computer science education.

Dr. Scarlatos earned her Ph.D. in 1993 from the department of Computer Science at Stony Brook University. Her dissertation research, which focused on 3D level of detail modeling, led to an ARPA/USATEC contract to extend and apply her techniques. Before coming to Stony Brook, she was an associate professor of computer science at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center. She has been principle investigator on numerous grants from the National Science Foundation, including the prestigious CAREER award and a highly competitive BPC (broadening participation in computing) grant. Her CRCD (combined research curriculum development) grant, in collaboration with Stony Brook, has led to several innovative educational applications as well as collaborations with the School of Education at Brooklyn College, the Goudreau Museum of Mathematics in Art and Science, the Cleary School for the Deaf, and Suffolk County BOCES.

Dr. Scarlatos spent 10 years working in industry. In Grumman Data Systems' R&D department, she worked on cartographic applications and image analysis for the Air Force. At Lecht Sciences, she worked on animated games for PCs, and was named Vice-President at age 25. Dr. Scarlatos has also studied fine arts, and will be happy to show you her sketchbook if you ask.

Research Grants 
BIGSCE: Branching Interactive Graphic Stories for Cybersecurity Education (2016-2019)
Dr. Lori Scarlatos, in collaboration with Secure Decisions, a subsidiary of Applied Visions Inc., is working on a grant funded by the NSF Secure and Trustworthy Computing (SaTC) program. Research shows that to capture more student interest in the field of cybersecurity, students need to be engaged during middle school. We have been offering after-school and summer workshops for middle school students to teach them about cybersecurity concepts and careers. Students in the workshop read comic stories about cybersecurity, and then create their own comics using Comic-BEE. This novel comic-creation software was funded by the Department of Homeland Security and developed by Secure Decisions (with Stony Brook consulting): https://comic-bee.com/. A promotional video can be seen below. And the project website is located at https://www.ic.sunysb.edu/Projects/bigsce/.

 

CyberMISTS: Cybersecurity for Middle School Teachers and Students (2019-2021)
Dr. Lori Scarlatos, in collaboration with Secure Decisions, a subsidiary of Applied Visions Inc., has been awarded a new grant funded by the NSF Secure and Trustworthy Computing (SaTC) program. Although research shows that middle school is the best time to introduce students to cybersecurity, middle school teachers often lack the knowledge and resources to teach cybersecurity to students at this age. Our project will host summer workshops that provide middle school Career and Technical Education teachers the knowledge, skills, and tools they need to actively engage students and expose them to cybersecurity concepts and careers. In the CyberMiSTS workshops, teachers will learn from cybersecurity researchers, engage in hands-on activities and customize cybersecurity course materials for their own classrooms. Rather than dive deeply into underlying math and science, the focus will be on key concepts and big questions to encourage participation from a broad and diverse set of students. The workshop and course materials will incorporate Comic-BEE, a novel web application for creating educational, branching web comics. Branching stories provide opportunities to explore cause and effect. The comic style is engaging to middle school students who are disinclined to read long texts, and can incorporate culturally relevant pedagogy with the potential to reach more students. After the workshop, teachers will use those materials in their own classrooms with instruments we provide to gauge their students’ understanding of cybersecurity concepts and interest in cybersecurity careers. This workshop is being developed with help from Suffolk County BOCES and the National Security Institute at SBU. Teachers who are interested in finding out more are encouraged to go to the website: https://www.stonybrook.edu/commcms/cybermists/index.php

Office: 1413 Computer Science
Hours: Mondays, 4-5:30pm (online) and Thursdays, 11:30am - 1:00pm (face-to-face or online). You will need an appointment. Send email for the link.

Phone: 631-632-8761
Email: lori.scarlatos@stonybrook.edu
Website: https://www3.cs.stonybrook.edu/~lori/