Photos + Some Highlights of New England Security Day @UMassAmherst

This week is only the second week of the new academic year at UMass Amherst and has it been a busy start!

Today, after teaching my Transportation and Logistics class at the Isenberg School,  I was off to the College of Information and Computer Sciences (newly named) to take part in the New England Security Day (NESD 2015).  The program was fantastic with individual talks, a keynote by Jeremy Epstein of the National Science Foundation, and several panels. Plus, in the afternoon, there was a poster session.

The day began with welcoming remarks by Dr. Brian Levine of Computer Science, who has been spearheading cybersecurity initiatives at UMass, and by our Povost, Dr. Katherine Newman.

The keynote by Jeremy Epstein was simply fabulous.  It was not only very informative but also delivered with a great sense of humor. The importance of cybersecurity research as well as the challenges associated with multidisciplinary research were highlighted.

He also noted the importance of the NSF EAGER program, which I was delighted to hear about since my colleague, Professor Tilman Wolf, and I, with collaborators from the University of Kentucky recently received an EAGER grant. Epstein is a rotator at NSF, has had the position for 4 years, and is stepping down in January. His will be big shoes to fill.

There were 115 registrants for NESD and faculty and students came not only from many New England academic institutions (including Harvard, Dartmouth, WPI, Brown University, UConn, UMass Lowell, Northeastern) but also from New York (SUNY Stony Brook) and New Jersey  (Rutgers and Stevens Institute of Technology). This speaks to the timeliness and importance of cybersecurity research.

Below are photos of the speakers this morning and of the audience.

Lunch was provided and was delicious.

Dr. Susan Landau of WPI was the first speaker in the afternoon.

All the talks were great and it was nice to see female speakers as well as many female students. Several told me that they were so impressed by the number of females in attendance.

The refreshments were also perfect - Atkins cider donuts, fresh fruit, veggies, and cheese and crackers.

The poster session was also very interesting and a great opportunity for networking. I was very happy that my doctoral students, Shivani Shukla and Sara Saberi, presented posters and, speaking of serendipity, the poster that Shivani presented was based in part on a paper of ours just published today in the new book, Computation, Cryptography, and Network Security, edited by N.J. Daras and M.T. Rassias.  Dr. Rassias co-edited another book with John Nash, which will be John Nash's last book.

I enjoyed talking with 2 PhD students in Computer Science from Brown University, my alma mater.

One of the best aspects of today's event was not only the exchange of ideas but the conversations and the meeting of new colleagues. I can foresee new collaborations because of this event. It was also terrific to work over the summer with colleagues from Computer Science, the Isenberg School, the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Math/Stats to make this event happen.

Kudos also to those in the last session, which still had a big audience because the topics were so interesting.

A huge thank you to Professor Brian Levine for bringing us all together for the terrific New England Security Day. Based on the response and interest, I suspect that such an event will be held not once but, possibly, twice a year.

Thanks to everyone for a very stimulating and energizing day! Special thanks to Michelle Roberts for the flawless logistics and smooth operation.

Great Hackathon @UMassAmherst

This morning I visited the Hackathon at UMass Amherst, which is taking place April 11-12, 2015 at the stunning Integrated Learning Center.

The Hackathon is called HackUMass and is the largest hackathoon in the Pioneer Valley.

My husband and I were invited by Tom Kopec, who is an entrepreneur and a mentor to the hackers this year.

The host of this year's hackathon is the Berthiaume Center for Entrepreneurship at the Isenberg School of Management, which is under the managing directorship of my colleague in the Department of Management, Professor Bill Wooldridge.

We enjoyed seeing the students. some of whom were bright-eyed whereas others were fast asleep (on the floor, on couches, or on their keyboards).

We enjoyed talking to some of the teams, including a team of students from multiple universities (I had to take a photo since I am a Brown U. grad), who have known each other since they were students at Wayland High School.

I loved the drone with parts built by a 3-D printer, which also was used to construct the statue of my colleague, who is serving as a judge later today, Professor David McLaughlin of the College of Engineering.

It was great to talk to Professor Wooldridge, who told me that he had slept in his office on an air mattress since he had to be available if there was an issue overnight.  That's the dedication of Isenberg faculty!

I look forward to hearing the results of the judging later today and the awarding of prizes. Given that 300 hackers showed up, according to Wooldridge,  and that there was even an entrant from USC, this was clearly a very successful event.

I was thrilled also to get t-shirst  from Professor Wooldridge!

I heard from Tom Kopec (in the above photo with me and Wooldridge) that last year's hackathon, which was hosted by the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, had mostly hardware entries - this year,  about 75% of the projects are are software projects. I was also delighted to see female students om the mix.

Thanks to the sponsors - some of my favorite companies, where I have both former students and great colleagues from INFORMS working.