Where: https://umbc.webex.com/

This is the second in a series of events that aim to build community among students from groups traditionally underrepresented in the field of computing.

Join us for an opportunity to meet, chat with, and engage fellow CSEE students, faculty, staff, and alumni.

Panelists will discuss life beyond the undergraduate years.

Let’s Do This! Be Social- Virtually

Welcome Remarks– Dr. Freeman Hrabowski

Alumni Speakers

Dr. Jeff Avery, Northrup Grumman

Federico Cifuentes-Urtubey, Ph.D. student, UIUC

Dr. Patti Ordóñez, Associate Prof., UP-RP

Dr. Nwokedi Idika, Google

Kerry Luke, Northrop Grumman

CSEE Faculty Speakers

Mr. Ivan Sekyonda                          Dr. Marcella Wilson

Dr. Dmitri Perkins                             Dr. David Chapman

UMBC Cyber Defense Lab presents

Secure Computation: From Theory to Practice

Jonathan Katz

Computer Science Department
University of Maryland, College Park

12:00–1:00 pm EDT, Friday, 30 October 2020
Online via Webex

Protocols for secure multi-party computation (MPC) allow a collection of mutually distrusting parties to compute a function of their private inputs without revealing anything else about their inputs to each other. Secure computation was shown to be feasible 35 years ago, but only in the past decade has its efficiency been improved to the point where it has been implemented and, more recently, begun to be used. This real-world deployment of secure computation suggests new applications and raises new questions.

This talk will survey some recent work at the intersection of the theory and practice of MPC, focusing on a surprising application to the construction of Picnic, a “post-quantum” signature scheme currently under consideration by NIST for standardization.

Jonathan Katz is a faculty member in the department of computer science at the University of Maryland, College Park, where he formerly served as director of the Maryland Cybersecurity Center for over five years. He is an IACR Fellow, was named a University of Maryland distinguished scholar-teacher in 2017-2018, and received the ACM SIGSAC Outstanding Contribution Award in 2019.

Host: Alan T. Sherman, . Support for this event was provided in part by the National Science Foundation under SFS grant DGE-1753681. The UMBC Cyber Defense Lab meets biweekly Fridays 12-1pm. All meetings are open to the public.

Upcoming CDL Meetings: Nov. 13, TBA, [possibly: David R Imbordino (NSA), Security of the 2020 presidential election]; Dec. 11, TBA, [possibly: Peter A. H. Peterson (Univ. of Minnesota Duluth), Adversarial Thinking]

UMBC Data Science Meetup Talk

Exploding Blockchain Myths

Maria Vachino and Dr. James P. Howard

5:30-7:00pm Tuesday, 13 October 2020

In this talk, Maria Vachino from Easy Dynamics and Dr. James P. Howard from APL will provide an overview of what blockchain is and isn’t, focusing on non-cryptocurrency use cases, will explain the results of their research for the DHS S&T Cybersecurity Directorate, and will provide insight into the value (or lack therefore) of the technology.

References:
• https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8965252/
• http://jitm.ubalt.edu/XXX-3/article3.pdf

Maria Vachino is the Director of Digital Identity at Easy Dynamics where she is focused on Identity Credential & Access Management (ICAM) technologies, policies, & standards, Cybersecurity, and IT modernization for the US Federal Government. She started investigating applications for blockchain technology in 2015 as the Technical and Government Engagement Lead for the DHS S&T Cyber Security Directorate’s Identity Management Research & Development Program while a member of the Senior Professional Staff at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab. Maria has a BS in Computer Science from UMBC and an MS in Cybersecurity.

Dr. James P. Howard, II (UMBC Ph.D. ’14) is a scientist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. Previously, he was a consultant to numerous government agencies, including the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Executive Office of the President, and the United States Department of Homeland Security, and worked for the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System as an internal consultant on scientific computing. He is a passionate educator, teaching mathematics and statistics at the University of Maryland Global Campus since 2010 and has taught public management at Central Michigan University, Penn State, and the University of Baltimore. His most recent work has modeled the spread of infectious respiratory diseases and Ebolavirus, predicted global disruptive events, researched using blockchain for government services, and created devices for rescuing victims of building collapse. He is the author of two books.

The Alex. Brown Center For Entrepreneurship
The Raymond V. Haysbert, Sr. Entrepreneurship Lecture Series
presents

From UMBC to CEO

Delali Dzirasa, Fearless
UMBC ‘04, BS Computer Engineering

12:00-1:00 pm Wednesday, 30 September 2020
online via Webex

Come listen to Delali, CEO and Founder of Fearless, talk about his entrepreneurial journey after he left UMBC. Every day Delali strives to make a difference in technology and in his surrounding community. He is passionate about increasing the rate of city youth heading into STEM fields and works closely with city nonprofits to provide funding and mentorship programs in city schools, as well as other educator initiatives. Fearless is a full stack digital services firm in Baltimore, Maryland with a mission to create software with a soul – tools that empower communities and make a difference. Fearless delivers sleek, modern, and user-friendly software designed to push the boundaries of possibility, to create a world where good software powers the things that matter.

Every day Delali strives to make a difference in technology and in his surrounding community. He is passionate about increasing the rate of city youth heading into STEM fields and works closely with city nonprofits to provide funding and mentorship programs in city schools, as well as other educator initiatives.

Delali Dzirasa ‘04 is the CEO and Founder, of Fearless. He received a B.S. in computer engineering from UMBC in 2004. His awards and affiliations include UMBC Outstanding Young Alumni of the Year, 2011; Board Member, Downtown Partnership of Baltimore; Board Member, UMBC College of Engineering & Information Technology; Co-Founder / Chair DevOpsDays, Baltimore; BBJ’s 40 under 40, 2017; Co-Founder, Digital Services Coalition, 2018; Co-Founder, Hack Baltimore, 2018; GBC LEADERship class of 2018; BBJ’s National List of Influential 100; Young Executives, 2018; and BBJ’s Tech 10, 2019.

For more information, see this flyer

The Raymond V. Haysbert, Sr. Entrepreneurship Lecture Series provides a platform for successful entrepreneurs to candidly share their experiences and insights with UMBC students, faculty, alumni and the Baltimore business community. The series highlights experiences, lessons learned and unique issues and challenges faced by entrepreneurs in the creation of a new enterprise.

The UMBC Cyber Defense Lab presents

Psychometric Evaluation of the Cybersecurity Concept Inventory

Seth Poulsen

Computer Science
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

12:00noon–1pm, Friday, September 18, 2020

https://umbc.webex.com/meet/sherman

Joint work with Geoffrey Herman, Alan Sherman, Linda Oliva, Peter Peterson, Enis Golaszewski, Travis Scheponik, and Akshita Gorti.

We present a psychometric evaluation of a revised version of the Cybersecurity Concept Inventory (CCI) completed by 355 students from 29 colleges and universities. The CCI is a conceptual test of understanding created to enable research on instruction quality in cybersecurity education. This work extends previous expert review and small-scale pilot testing of the CCI. Results show that the CCI aligns with a curriculum many instructors expect from an introductory cybersecurity course, and that it is a valid and reliable tool for assessing what cybersecurity conceptual knowledge students learned.

Seth Poulsen is a PhD candidate in computer science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I’m interested in Computing Education, Programming Language design and implementation, Math Education, and any interesting intersections of the above. Previously, he was a Software Engineer at Amazon.com, working on Kindle Web Rendering and the Kindle Lite Android app. email: ,

Support for this research was provided in part by the U.S. Department of Defense under CAE-R grants H98230-15-1-0294, H98230-15-1-0273, H98230-17-1-0349, H98230-17-1-0347; and by the National Science Foundation under UMBC SFS grants DGE-1241576, 1753681, and SFS Capacity Grants DGE-1819521, 1820531. For more on the educational Cybersecurity Assessment Tools (CATS) Project: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2004.05248.pdf

Host: Alan T. Sherman,

The UMBC Cyber Defense Lab meets biweekly Fridays 12-1pm. All meetings are open to the public. Upcoming CDL Meetings:

• Oct. 2, TBA [possibly: security of payment infrastructure]
• Oct. 16, TBA [possibly: Jonathan Katz (GMU)]
• Oct. 30, TBA
• Nov. 13, TBA, [possibly: David R Imbordino (NSA), Security of the 2020 presidential election]
• Dec. 11, TBA, [possibly: Peter A. H. Peterson (Univ. of Minnesota Duluth), Adversarial Thinking]

Workshop on the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program

1:00 – 2:00 pm Friday, 18 September 2020

Google Meet or call +1 929-287-3119‬ PIN: ‪979 220 386‬#

Find out about the NSF GRFP, a prestigious 3-year graduate research fellowship program providing $34,000/year stipend and other benefits.

This workshop is open to anyone in the College. We especially encourage eligible PhD-interested juniors, seniors, and junior grad students to attend, though any undergraduate with an interest in grad school would benefit. Topics will include, among others, eligibility requirements, the application process, and short+long term career benefits.

Graduating seniors who receive awards can use them at any school for which they have been accepted.

Balaji Vishwanathan (MS ’07) startup company Invento Robotics is featured in Forbes India magazine

Balaji Viswanathan started his career at Microsoft, and moved from there to develop startups in such diverse areas as robotics, education, and finance. He has embraced the true calling of an entrepreneur, using long term goals to develop companies that actively seek to make a global impact. This is exemplified by his Bengaluru-based company, Invento Robotics, which is currently using its humanoid robots to provide a myriad of services, from taking temperatures to collecting patient information to bringing medications and food to patients in isolation wards, in an effort to fight COVID-19.

His business was featured in Forbes India magazine as part of a series on companies that have pivoted to use technology to address the Covid-19 pandemic. The article discusses how  Invento has applied its first mobile robot models, Mitra, to perform tasks like collecting patient details, checking temperatures, and setting up video calls with doctors. Two new models, C-Astra and Robodoc have now been deployed to disinfect rooms and virtually interact with patients inside Covid-19 wards.

Balaji has recently returned to UMBC as a part-time Ph.D. student in the Computer Science program and will work on research topics that will advance the state of the art in supporting intelligent robotics.

Best Practices for Handling Data Analytics Challenges in Healthcare

Aaron Wilkowitz
Customer Engineer, Healthcare & Life Sciences, Google

5:30 – 7:00 pm EDT, Tuesday, 15 September 2020
free and online; register here to get the link

Aaron specializes in Healthcare & Federal and has worked with numerous private companies & federal agencies around reaching better healthcare outcomes and minimizing fraud through smarter data. Previously Aaron worked at a predictive analytics firm APT helping Fortune 200 companies drive to better data-driven decisions.

Agenda
5:30 – 5:35 Welcome
5:35 – 6:30 Aaron Wilkowitz Talk
6:30 – 6:45 Q&A