LERSAIS is host to a Seminar Series that brings researchers and practitioners to Pittsburgh to share emerging developments and research in the area of Information Assurance. The field of Cyber Security faces new challenges and demands on a daily basis and these seminars serve to keep students, faculty, and business leaders abreast of issues in both the laboratory and industry.
Professionals and investigators who would like more information on this series, or have an idea for a topic, are invited to contact Prof. James Joshi.
The seminars are open to all. Check out our upcoming presentations.
Spring 2016
Dr. Heiko Ludwig
January 8, 2016
"Measuring and Managing Quality of Service in a Cloud Environment"
LERSAIS Seminar
Speaker: Dr. Heiko Ludwig
Research Staff Member and Manager, IBM Research
Time/Location
1:30 PM, Refreshment reception at 1:00PM
IS Building, 3rd Floor collaboration space
Abstract:
Today's application environments combine Cloud and on-premise infrastructure Platforms and services from different providers enable the quick development and delivery of solutions to their intended users. The ability to use Cloud platforms to stand up applications in a short time frame, the wide availability of Web services, and the application of a continuous deployment model has led to very dynamic application environments. In those application environments, managing quality of service has become more important. The more external service vendors are involved the less control an application owner has and must rely on Service Level Agreements (SLAs). However, SLA management is becoming more difficult. Services from different vendors expose different instrumentation. In addition, the increasing dynamism of application environments entails that the speed of SLA monitoring set up must match the speed of changes to the application environment. This talk will analyze the iss ues of defining service quality metrics, measuring them, and implementing them in a multi-layer Cloud environment, both, from a service customer and a service provider's point of view. Standard approaches to measure and manage service quality will be revisited and the novel rSLA language and service for quality management will be introduced. rSLA is both flexible enough to instrument virtually any environment and agile enough to scale and update SLA management as needed.
Biography:
Dr. Heiko Ludwig is a Research Staff Member and Manager with IBM's Almaden Research Center in San Jose, CA. Leading the Platform and Mobile Research group, Dr. Ludwig is currently working on topics related to Platform as a Service (PaaS) as well as mobile applications. He had published more than 100 refereed articles, conference papers, and book chapters as well as technical reports. Prior to the Alamaden Research Center, Dr. Ludwig held different positions at IBM in the TJ Watson Research Center, the Zurich Research Laboratory, and IBM's South American Delivery Centers in Argentina and Brazil.
Dr. Rasu Shrestha, MD, MBA
January 29, 2016
"Life Changing Innovation: data to actionable insights to impactful change"
LERSAIS Seminar
Speaker: Dr. Rasu Shrestha, MD, MBA
Chief Innovation Officer, UPMC Executive Vice President, UPMC Enterprises
Time/Location
11:15 AM, Refreshment reception at 11:00AM
IS Building, 3rd Floor collaboration space
Abstract:
Today, we are data rich and information poor in healthcare. This talk aims to discuss some of the challenges, trends and opportunities in healthcare, as UPMC looks to work with entrepreneurs, academia, clinicians and the industry to transform how healthcare is being delivered. The presentation will outline the key focus areas for UPMC Enterprises and highlight the processes that have been put in place. This will be presented amidst the backdrop of key challenges/opportunities in healthcare, such as data interoperability, population health, security, big data and analytics.
Biography:
As chief innovation officer for UPMC, Dr. Shrestha plays a leading role in driving UPMC's innovation strategy, serving as a catalyst for transforming the organization into a more patient-focused and economically sustainable system. Dr. Shrestha also serves as the executive vice president of UPMC Enterprises, the innovation and commercialization arm of UPMC. As the leader of a team of over 200 technology professionals, Dr. Shrestha works to facilitate new health care intelligence, technology expertise and entrepreneurial drive to solve complex health care challenges. Through strategic partnerships, joint development agreements and investments in promising health care startups, Dr. Shrestha champions the development, implementation and commercialization of these innovations. Dr. Shrestha has been recognized by Becker's Hospital Review as one of the 26 "Smartest People in Health IT," and InformationWeeknamed him one of the "Top 20 Health IT Leaders Driving Change" and a "Top Healthcare Innovator." He is a frequent speaker at national and international health care, innovation and technology conferences.
Dr. Roy Maxion, PhD
March 25, 2016
"Science of Cybersecurity"
LERSAIS Seminar
Speaker: Dr. Roy Maxion, PhD
Research Professor in Computer Science and Machine Learning
Time/Location
2:00 PM
IS Building, 3rd Floor collaboration space
Abstract:
Science of (or in) cybersecurity -- there has been more heat than light on this topic in the past two to three years. If you ask N people what "doing science" in cybersecurity means, you will likely get N different answers, which is part of the problem. In this talk I will present one of those N answers, but with an emphasis on what constitutes good science, irrespective of discipline. Examples will be given to show how bad science contaminates the literature (often for years) and impedes progress in the field.
Biography:
Roy Maxion is a research professor in computer science and machine learning at Carnegie Mellon University. His recent work has focused on keystroke biometrics and forensics. He is currently on the editorial boards of IEEE Security & Privacy, and the International Journal of Biometrics. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Future Research Goals and Directions for Foundational Science in Cybersecurity.
Dr. Patrick McDaniel
April 22, 2016
"The Importance of Measurement and Decision Making to a Science of Security "
LERSAIS Seminar
Speaker: Dr. Patrick McDaniel
Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, Pennsylvania State University
Time/Location
3:00 PM, Refreshment reception at 2:30PM
IS Building, 3rd Floor collaboration space
Abstract:
Adaptive defenses alter the environment in response to adversarial action and perceived threats. Such defenses are a specific example of a broader class of management techniques called system agility. In its fullest generality, a science of agility is based on a reasoned modification to a system or environment in response to a functional, performance, or security needs. This talk highlights the activities surrounding the investigation of this science within the recently launched Cyber-Security Collaborative Research Alliance. In this context, the talk identifies questions of when, what, and how to employ changes to improve the security of an environment, as well as consider how to measure and weigh the effectiveness of different approaches to agility.
Biography:
Patrick McDaniel is a distinguished professor in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Penn State University, co-director of the Systems and Internet Infrastructure Security Laboratory, and fellow of IEEE and ACM. Dr. McDaniel is also the program manager and lead scientist for the Army Research Laboratory's Cyber-Security Collaborative Research Alliance. Dr. McDaniel's research efforts centrally focus on a wide range of topics in security technical public policy. He was the editor-in-chief of the ACM journal Transactions on Internet Technology (TOIT), and served as associate editor of the journals ACM Transactions on Information and System Security, IEEE Transactions on Computers, and IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering. Dr. McDaniel's was awarded the National Science Foundation CAREER Award and has chaired several top conferences in security including the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy and the USENIX Security Symposium. Prior to pursuing his PhD at the University of Michigan, Dr. McDaniel's was a software architect and project manager in the telecommunications industry.