Penn State Undergrad’s Groundbreaking Renewable Power Discovery Highlights Keystone State Tech News
It is our pleasure to once again report on positive technology news here in Pennsylvania. You can see our previous posts bragging on Keystone State tech here, here, here, and here.
Nittany Lion Engineering Achievement: Even before the football season starts, there’s been a big win for Penn State.
Wind power is a useful renewable supplement to our power supply, and Divya Tyagi, an undergrad (!!!) at Penn State, has solved a century-old math problem that had vexed wind turbine designers and operators. Her solution used a calculus of variations (which allows for a greater range of possible real world conditions) to improve upon the early 20th century work of British aerodynamicist Hermann Glauert. Tyagi’s amendment to Glauert’s optimum rotor disk solution for the maximum power coefficient was presented in a paper (coauthored with Sven Schmitz) that can be read here.
Congrats to Divya and everyone involved with her work in State College on this meaningful breakthrough!
Mature Economy Yet Still Growing: Pennsylvania is one of only four states in the union to be top 10 in both net tech employment (#9) and net tech employment job gains (#6). The others are Texas, Florida, and North Carolina, all Sun Belt states benefiting from significant population growth. Those states have ridden along with population trends, but ours is truly organic growth in technology jobs.
That nugget is in the State of the Tech Workforce 2025 Report from technology training and certification provider CompTIA. The detailed report offers nationwide trends and data as well as an individual page on each state.
The top sectors driving hiring in the Commonwealth won’t surprise you:
Tech
Finance and Insurance
Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services
Management and Holding Companies
Those four sectors encompass many economic leaders in our region and are responsible for over 135,000 tech jobs in Pennsylvania.
The statistics in the report exhibit the strength of our state’s technology sector.
Innovation Academy Focuses on Science & Technology: Our local newspaper The Reading Eagle recently toured the under-construction Reading High School Innovation Academy. Tracks of study available to students will include engineering, medical science, computer science & internet technology, and STEM & human services. RHSIA will have its first students enrolled for the 2026-27 school year.
The Academy would have pleased the late Albert Boscov, who founded Direct LTx 18 years ago to provide a local IT infrastructure foundation to help his hometown be a participant in the tech boom. We look forward to offering students tours to show them how their neighborhood high-availability data center provides the secure, richly connected backbone for the online platforms that they have grown up with.