Robert is a recognized authority in the industrial cybersecurity community. He is CEO and co-founder of Dragos, a global technology leader in cybersecurity for industrial controls systems (ICS)/operational technology (OT) environments.

In addition, Robert serves on the Department of Energy’s Electricity Advisory Committee as the Vice Chair of the Department of Energy’s Grid Resilience for National Security Subcommittee, and is a member of the World Economic Forum’s subcommittees on Cyber Resilience for the Oil & Gas and Electricity communities.

Robert is routinely sought after for advice and input on cybersecurity for industrial infrastructure and is regularly asked to brief national leaders. He testified to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce–Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, and to the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, to advise on policy issues related to critical infrastructure cyber threats. He has also presented at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos, and industry leading conferences such as RSA, SANS, BlackHat, and DefCon on the topic of industrial cybersecurity and threats. He serves on the board of the National Cryptologic Foundation.

Robert began his pioneering work in ICS/OT cybersecurity as a U.S. Air Force Cyber Warfare Operations Officer tasked to the National Security Agency, where he built a first-of-its-kind mission identifying and analyzing national threats to industrial infrastructure. He went on to build the industrial community’s first dedicated monitoring and incident response class at the SANS Institute (ICS515) and the industry recognized cyber threat intelligence course (FOR578).

SC Media named Robert the Security Executive of the Year for 2022. A business leader but also technical practitioner, he helped lead the investigation into the 2015 attack on Ukraine’s power grid, the first time an electric system was taken down due to a cyberattack. With his team at Dragos he has been involved in the most significant cyberattacks on industrial infrastructure, including the investigation and analysis of the 2016 attack on Ukraine’s electric system, the 2017 TRISIS attack on a Saudi Arabian petrochemical facility in the first attempt to try to kill people through malicious software, and the 2021 Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack. In 2022, his team at Dragos uncovered PIPEDREAM, a highly flexible framework to attack industrial infrastructure globally. Robert’s work has been featured in the book Sandworm and on 60 Minutes.

Wendy Nather leads the Advisory CISO team at Cisco. She was previously the Research Director at the Retail ISAC, and Research Director of the Information Security Practice at 451 Research. Wendy led IT security for the EMEA region of the investment banking division of Swiss Bank Corporation (now UBS), and served as CISO of the Texas Education Agency. She was inducted into the Infosecurity Europe Hall of Fame in 2021. Wendy serves on the advisory board for Sightline Security. She is a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Cyber Statecraft Initiative, as well as a Senior Cybersecurity Fellow at the Robert Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas at Austin.

Snehal Antani is an entrepreneur, technologist, and investor. He is CEO & Founder of Horizon3.ai, a cyber security company using AI to deliver autonomous penetration Testing.

Prior to Horizon3, Snehal served as the first Chief Technology Officer for Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). As a member of the Commander’s executive team, he led data analytics, cloud/edge computing, and cybersecurity initiatives

Prior to serving within US Special Operations, Snehal was CTO & SVP at Splunk, held multiple CIO roles at GE Capital, and started his career as a Software Engineer at IBM.

Snehal earned a Masters in Computer Science from Rensselaer Polytechnic University (RPI), a BS in Computer Science from Purdue University, and holds 18 patents.

Aniket Bera is an Associate Professor at the Department of Computer Science at Purdue University. He directs the IDEAS lab (Intelligent Design for Empathetic and Augmented Systems). His core research interests are in Affective Computing, Social/Human Robotics, Computer Graphics (AR/VR, Augmented Intelligence, Multi-Agent Simulation), Autonomous Agents, Cognitive modeling, and planning for intelligent characters. He is currently serving as the Senior Editor for IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters (RA-L) in the area of “Planning and Simulation”. His work has won multiple awards at top Graphics/VR conferences. He has previously worked in many research labs, including Disney Research and Intel. Aniket’s research has been featured on ABC News, Bloomberg, CBS, WIRED, Forbes, FastCompany, Times of India, etc.

Barrett S. Caldwell is Professor of Industrial Engineering (and Aeronautics & Astronautics, by courtesy) at Purdue. His PhD (Univ. of California, Davis, 1990) is in Social Psychology, and BS degrees in Aeronautics and Astronautics and Humanities (MIT, 1985). His research team is the Group Performance Environments Research (GROUPER) Laboratory. GROUPER examines and improves how people get, share, and use information well in settings including aviation, critical incident response, healthcare, and spaceflight operations. Prof. Caldwell has over 200 scientific publications, including journal articles, conference proceedings, and book chapters.
He was named in 2008 as a Fellow of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES, the leading scientific body in this area in the US and one of the premier ergonomics societies in the world). Prof. Caldwell was also asked to co-organize the 2008 session on Cognitive Ergonomics for the National Academy of Engineering US Frontiers of Engineering (FOE) conference. (He was also a participant in the 2003 US FOE, and the 2006 German-American FOE, conferences.) His work demonstrates a fundamentally interdisciplinary and multifaceted approach to learning, exchanging, and applying knowledge.

During his 2010-2011 participation as a member of the Purdue Entrepreneurial Leadership Academy, Prof. Caldwell developed and extended a model of university-industry partnerships, highlighting campus and corporate tensions to manage intellectual property portfolios and knowledge worker skill sets. In 2011, he was named a Purdue University Faculty Scholar. From August 2016 through August 2017, he served in Washington, DC as a Jefferson Science Fellow in the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, Office of Japanese Affairs.

Since 2020, Prof. Caldwell has devoted additional time and effort to leadership and stewardship for the Purdue University community. In October 2020, he was invited to participate as a member, and Working Team Lead, for the Purdue Equity Task Force; in May, 2021 he was named strategic advisor and Provost Fellow for the Equity Task Force Implementation Team, focusing on representation, experience and success for Black graduate students, postdocs, and faculty. From January – May 2022, Prof. Caldwell also provides stewardship to the School of Industrial Engineering as Interim Head.

Peter Choi has been working for SNL past 12 years as Principal Member of Technical Staff. He possesses over 25 years
of information assurance management and systems security engineering experience engaging in the areas of DoD, DOE,
DHS, financial, and educational industry. Peter has extensive knowledge in COMSEC key management systems, DITSCAP, DIACAP and DIARMF management experiences. He has led numerous Army and Air Force projects related to information assurance as well as providing cybersecurity risk management consultation services to Higher Education (i.e., University of San Francisco, Northwestern University, and John Hopkins University, Stanford University, UC Berkeley). He has also served as a Corporate Information Security Officer for Citibank. During his tenure at Citibank, he played an instrumental role in demonstrating the world’s first use of PKI for e-commerce (i.e., NACHA* Interoperability Test). Field of technical interest includes PKI, authentication and identity management, biometrics, Smart Cards, NIST guidelines, FIPS 140-2 and Common Criteria certification. Since joining SNL, Peter has successfully filed four US Patents related to cybersecurity technologies and have received following patents: United States Patent # 10,439,817 (Ephemeral Biometrics); US Patent # 10,541,996 (Methods and Systems for Authenticating Identity); US Patent # 11,070,532 (Methods for Communicating Data Utilizing Sessionless Dynamic Encryption). Peter (as Principal Investigator) and his team have received 2021 R&D100 Award for revolutionary technology called Secure - Firmware Over-The-Air (S-FOTA). In 2019, Peter was able to form a small technology company, Cyber Sonata LLC, where he is working to find ways to commercialize laboratory inventions. Peter holds doctoral degree (Ph.D. in Computational Physics from Purdue University) as well as cybersecurity professional certifications (i.e., CISSP, CSSLP, and IAM). Peter is also an Adjunct Associate Professor at University Maryland Global Campus, teaching various cybersecurity graduate courses.

Richard DeMillo is a professor at Georgia Tech’s School of Cybersecurity and Privacy. He holds the Charlotte B. and Roger C. Warren Chair in Computing at Georgia Tech. He is is also Managing Director of Gtatrium™, LLC, a subsidiary of Georgia Advanced Technology Ventures. He was formerly the John P. Imlay Dean of Computing and Director of the Georgia Tech Information Security Center.

Positions he held prior to joining Georgia Tech, include:  Chief Technology Officer for Hewlett-Packard, Vice President of Computing Research for Bell Communications Research, Director of the Computer Research Division for the National Science Foundation, and Director of the Software Test and Evaluation Project for the Office of the Secretary of Defense. He has also held faculty positions at the University of Wisconsin, Purdue University and the University of Padua, Italy.

To provide a learning and testing environment for cybersecurity and network education and research, we have developed an open-source Internet Emulator (called SEED Emulator), which allows us to create a miniature Internet that can run inside a single personal machine or on multiple cloud machines. Even though it is small, it has all the essential elements of the real Internet. Many interesting network technologies can be deployed on the emulator. We have used this emulator to create a DNS infrastructure, a Botnet, a Darknet, an Internet worm, and BGP prefix hijacking attacks. Many more are being developed. We have also deployed the Ethereum blockchain on the emulator, creating a Blockchain emulator with tens or even hundreds of nodes, all inside a single computer.

This emulator has been primarily used for education after it was released in August 2021, but recently several research groups have started to use it for their research. In this talk, I will present the design and features of the SEED emulator and its applications in both research and education. I will also demonstrate some of the interesting hands-on lab activities based on the emulator.

Dr. Wenliang (Kevin) Du, IEEE Fellow, is the Laura J. and L. Douglas Meredith Professor at Syracuse University. His current research interest focuses on Internet/blockchain emulation and cybersecurity education. He received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Science and Technology of China in 1993 and Ph.D. degree from Purdue University in 2001 (CERIAS). He founded the SEED-Labs open-source project in 2002. The cybersecurity lab exercises developed from this project are now being used by 1,050 institutes worldwide. His self-published book, "Computer & Internet Security: A Hands-on Approach", has been adopted as textbook by 255 institutes. His online courses published on Udemy frequently won the “best seller” and “highest rated” recognition. He is the recipient of the 2017 Academic Leadership award from the 21st Colloquium for Information System Security Education. His research has been sponsored by multiple grants from the National Science Foundation and Google. He is a recipient of the 2021 ACSAC Test-of-Time Award and the 2013 ACM CCS Test-of-Time Award.

Mike is the Chief of Technology, Product Cyber and is on the leadership team of Rolls-Royce LibertyWorks Research and Technology based in Indianapolis, Indiana.  He has nearly 25 years of aerospace experience, predominantly in propulsion and power systems.  He’s supported all stages of the product lifecycle, from early research and development to production programs and aftermarket support in addition to five years in corporate strategy.  Mike is responsible for all the research and technology development activities required to secure current and future products across the company and directs a portfolio of internal projects through TRL6 that utilize a global university research network and other key industry partners.  Current research activities include feature/capability development, demonstrators, and digital modelling of cyber-physical systems via secure cyber-resilient engineering.  Previously, Mike worked for both the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy and has a master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Dayton and an MBA from Butler University.

Dr. Ghodsi’s research interests are at the intersection of machine learning, applied cryptography, and hardware. She is passionate about building secure systems for emerging intelligent devices and applications. Making practical systems requires addressing a variety of challenges at the protocol, algorithm, and hardware level which in many scenarios, should be designed together.

Mitch Kajzer is the Managing Director of the CIRE initiative out of the Center for Research Computing. His responsibilities include advising and overseeing digital forensics investigations, conducting research related to digital technology, and coordinating academic and private-sector courses and training related to digital forensics and technology. Mitch has been a law enforcement officer since 1989 and specializes in cybercrime investigations. He also created the St. Joseph County Cyber Crimes Unit where Notre Dame students work as investigators conducting digital forensics on criminal cases.

Wednesday, March 29th, 02:15pm - Panel Discussion: The Intersection of Space and Cybersecurity

Ambrose Kam is a Lockheed Martin Fellow with over 25 years of experience in the Department of Defense (DoD) industry. He is one of the earliest pioneers at applying modeling, simulation, and operations analysis techniques to threat modeling and cyber resiliency assessment. He regularly gives lectures at MIT, Georgia Tech, and industry consortiums like the Military Operations Research Society (MORS) and National Defense Industry Association (NDIA). Ambrose has been quoted in major publications including Forbes, The Economist, etc, and has co-authored a book in Simulation and Wargames. As a subject matter expert, he represents Lockheed Martin in industry standards organizations like ISO, LOTAR, and INCITS. His most recent efforts in wargaming, Machine Learning/Deep Learning, Cyber Digital Twin, and Blockchain earned him patents and trade secret awards. In 2017, Ambrose won the prestigious Asian American Engineer of the Year (AAEOY) award for his technical leadership and innovations. He holds several advanced degrees from MIT and Cornell University as well as a Bachelor of Science degree from the University at Buffalo.

Dr. Kimberly S. King is a Senior Engineer Specialist at the Aerospace Corporation where she is very fortunate to work in the intersection of cybersecurity, aerospace and national security. 
An enthusiastic problem solver, skilled at grasping complex challenges, assimilating, and analyzing information, and examining problems from multiple perspectives – including human and technical.
Broad technical background in information technology to include cyber security, IP networks, and knowledge of national security challenges from DoD/IC perspectives.
Leads through collaboration, quickly researches, and grasps state-of-the-art, abstracts from prior experience to add value rapidly. Technology professional and teacher, translating information between different communities enabling shared understanding while employing human kindness as a core strength.
The full life-work balance also includes Pilates, rowing, classical guitar, and playing with her menagerie of dogs and parrots. 
Kimberly holds a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Maryland at College Park and a bachelor’s degree in computer science from George Mason University.

Cybersecurity Engagement Lighting Talk, Tuesday, March 28th, 11:35am

Dr. Feng Li has been actively engaged in research on cybersecurity and trust issues, cloud, and mobile computing. He has published more than 50 papers in top conferences including INFOCOM and ICDCS. He welcomes any research/project collaboration on the above research topics.

Dr. Feng Li received Ph.D. in Computer Science from Florida Atlantic University in Aug. 2009. His Ph.D. advisor is Prof. Jie Wu. He earned his B.E. (Computer Science and Technology, 2002) and M.S. (Computer Science, 2005) from Southeast University (Nanjing, China). He joined the Department of Computer and Information Technology at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) in Aug. 2009. Dr. Li teaches Security and Networking courses in the department.

Kristyn Kimery Looney has worked in healthcare her entire career.  She has a Bachelor of Social Work and was Director of Social Services in a long-term care facility prior to attending the McKinney School of Law where she graduated Summa Cum Laude.  She has worked in a wide-ranging scope of in-house roles including at: a Fortune 50 health insurance company, Eskenazi (as Wishard), as General Counsel and Compliance officer at the Regenstrief Institute (a health IT and biomedical informatics think tank on the IUPUI campus), and currently as Assistant General Counsel with IU Health interfacing with Informatics and Information Systems, Supply Chain, and IU Health Plans as internal business customers.  Her primary focus is technology contracting, data only research, Data Governance, Intellectual Property, and Data Privacy and Security.  In her current and most recent past role, she’s interfaced with industry and academia and been a part of contracting for those relationships.

As Indiana’s Cybersecurity Program Director, Chetrice Mosley-Romero works collaboratively with public and private stakeholders to administer the development and implementation of the state’s cybersecurity strategy and policy through the Governor’s Executive Council on Cybersecurity. Prior to her current role, she was the Executive Director of External Affairs for the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission where she led the public relations, policy, and consumer affairs, divisions. Additionally, Mosley-Romero oversaw the Commission’s Continuity of Operations Plan and emergency management role with Indiana’s Department of Homeland Security (IDHS) Emergency Operations Center. She also served as a Steering Committee member and advisor to IDHS as the agency developed and implemented the first-of-its-kind Crit-Ex tabletop and operational exercise. Before her role at the Commission, she worked for the Indiana Department of Revenue where she was the Public Relations Manager over several strategic initiatives including the launch of Indiana’s Identity Theft Protection Program. An award-winning professional, Mosley-Romero has provided public relations and strategic consultation to a number of state agencies and organizations.

Dr. Karen Plaut became Executive Vice President for Research at Purdue University in January 2023. Overseeing an expanding $600 million research enterprise, Dr. Plaut is responsible for university-wide strategic initiatives and bringing together researchers and resources across traditional academic boundaries to drive interdisciplinary discoveries with societal impact.

She joined Purdue in 2010 as associate dean for research for the College of Agriculture and later became dean.

A researcher at heart, Dr. Plaut has approximately 100 publications focused on mammary gland biology and has received funding from USDA, NIH, NSF, and NASA.

Dr. Plaut earned her B.S. from the University of Vermont, M.S. from Pennsylvania State University and Ph.D. in animal science from Cornell University. Following a postdoctoral fellowship at the National Cancer Institute at NIH, she led mammary gland biology and breast cancer research at the University of Vermont, with dual appointments in the Department of Animal Science and the Department of Pathology in the College of Medicine.

Dr. Plaut then joined NASA and served as lead scientist for International Space Station Biological Research project working with engineers to build life science habitats for zero gravity. Space shuttle mission (STS-70) included her research investigating changes in mammary metabolism in rats.

Following her NASA appointment, she returned to the University of Vermont as Chair of the Animal Science department and then became Chair of Animal Science at Michigan State University before joining Purdue University.

Driving excellence in research and among researchers features strongly in Dr. Plaut’s leadership to bring about breakthroughs that matter to society.

Joel Rasmus is the managing director for Purdue University’s Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security (CERIAS); one of the largest and top-ranking interdisciplinary academic institute in North America focusing on cyber and cyber-physical assurance, security, privacy and resiliency. Rasmus joined Purdue in 2002, bringing with him more than 15 years of experience in project management. At CERIAS Rasmus developed a strategic partnership program that provides a formalized link between the University and industry. The program fosters tech transfer, basic and applied collaborative research, professional consultation and targeted student recruitment mechanisms. The CERIAS Strategic Partnership Program has led to unprecedented industry-academic integration with a number of commercial research programs. Rasmus also spearheaded successful CERAIS initiatives that lead to commercial partners opening local offices at the Purdue Research Park to further leverage and integrate their daily R&D and cyber management practices into CERIAS.

CERIAS Tech Talk, Wednesday March 29th, 11:30am

Dr. Kathryn Seigfried-Spellar is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer and Information Technology (CIT) at Purdue University. Dr. Seigfried-Spellar has multiple publications, book chapters, and conference paper presentations, including international presentations in India, Ireland, England, Russia, and South Korea on the who and why of cybercrime.  Specifically, Dr. Seigfried-Spellar studies the personality characteristics and socio-legal factors associated with cyberdeviance, such as Internet child pornography use, hacking, cyberbullying, trolling, and cyber threats via social media. In addition, Dr. Seigfried-Spellar has published in the area of digital forensics, specifically the ability to conduct a behavioral analysis of digital forensic evidence from child pornography investigations. Most recently, she published, along with Thomas J. Holt and Adam M. Bossler, the book, Cybercrime and Digital Forensics: An introduction (2nd edition). Dr. Seigfried-Spellar is a Fellow of the Digital and Multimedia Sciences section of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences (AAFS), International Association of Law Enforcement Intelligence Analysts (IALEIA), the American Psychological Association (APA), and the American Psychology-Law Society (AP-LS). Dr. Seigfried-Spellar also serves as an editorial board member for the Journal of Digital Forensics, Security, and Law as well as the International Journal of Psychology and Cyber Crime. 

Cybersecurity Engagement Lighting Talk, Tuesday, March 28th, 11:45pm

Professor Scott J. Shackelford is a Professor of Business Law and Ethics at the Indiana University Kelley School of Business. He serves as the Executive Director of the Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research, as well as the Executive Director of the Ostrom Workshop. He is also an Affiliated Scholar at both the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and Stanford’s Center for Internet and Society.

Professor Shackelford has written more than 100 articles, book chapters, essays, and op-eds for diverse publications. Similarly, Professor Shackelford’s research has been covered by an array of outlets, including Politico, NPR, CNN, Forbes, Time, the Washington Post, and the LA Times. He is the author of The Internet of Things: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press, 2020), Governing New Frontiers in the Information Age: Toward Cyber Peace (Cambridge University Press, 2020), and Managing Cyber Attacks in International Law, Business, and Relations: In Search of Cyber Peace (Cambridge University Press, 2014). He is also the lead editor of the first volume dedicated to cyber peace entitled Cyber Peace: Charting a Path Toward a Sustainable, Stable, and Secure Cyberspace (Cambridge University Press, 2022).

Both Professor Shackelford’s academic work and teaching have been recognized with numerous awards, including a Harvard University Research Fellowship, a Stanford University Hoover Institution National Fellowship, a Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study Distinguished Fellowship, the 2014 Indiana University Outstanding Junior Faculty Award, the 2015 Elinor Ostrom Award, and the 2022 Poets & Quants Best 40-Under-40 MBA Professors Award.

Eugene H. Spafford is a professor of Computer Sciences at Purdue University, a professor of Philosophy (courtesy appointment), and is Executive Director Emeritus of the Center for Education Research Information Assurance and Security. CERIAS is a campus-wide multi-disciplinary Center, with a broadly-focused mission to explore issues related to protecting information and information resources. Spaf has written extensively about information security, software engineering, and professional ethics. He has published over 100 articles and reports on his research, has written or contributed to over a dozen books, and he serves on the editorial boards of most major infosec-related journals.

CERIAS Tech Talk - “Defusing the Tension between Security and Performance with Secure Microarchitectures”, Wednesday, March 28th, 03:55pm

Prof. Taram is an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science at Purdue University. He received his PhD. degree from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) at the University of California San Diego (UCSD) in 2022. His research interests are in computer architecture and computer security. In particular, he is interested in microarchitectural attacks, high-performance mitigations, and architecture support for security and privacy.