Speakers

Keynotes

IDA and the FFRDC Research Ecosystem

General Norton Schwartz

President, Institute for Defense Analyses

The security environment has shifted and evolved since the establishment of the Department of Defense, Joint Staff and Combatant Command structure after the conclusion of World War II in 1947. The establishment of the structure for joint warfighting provided new opportunities for analytic support to the newly formed department of defense. The Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) was created in 1956 to provide analyses in support of the new department. IDA’s mission is to answer the most challenging U.S. security and science policy questions with objective analysis leveraging extraordinary scientific, technical, and analytic expertise. As a manager of three Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDC), IDA is part of a network of analytic agencies funded by the Department of Defense, Department of Energy, Homeland Security, National Science Foundation, and other executive agencies to support the variety security issues faced by the United States. This network of FFRDCs provide a vast array of opportunity to perform research and analyses in support of the United States. We will discuss these opportunities and some of the recent analyses performed by our three FFRDCs, IDA Systems and Analyses Center, IDA Science and Technology Policy Institute and the IDA Center for Communications and Computing. We will highlight research and career opportunities and research areas with the potential for significant impact.

About Norton Schwartz

Norton A. Schwartz serves as President of the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA), a nonprofit corporation operating in the public interest. IDA manages three Federally Funded Research and Development Centers that answer the most challenging U.S. security and science policy questions with objective analysis leveraging extraordinary scientific, technical, and analytic expertise. At IDA, General Schwartz (U.S. Air Force, retired) directs the activities of more than 1,000 scientists and technologists employed by IDA.

General Schwartz has a long and prestigious career of service and leadership that spans over five decades. He was most recently President and CEO of Business Executives for National Security (BENS). During his six-year tenure at BENS, he was also a member of IDA’s Board of Trustees.

Prior to retiring from the U.S. Air Force, General Schwartz served as the 19th Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force from 2008 to 2012. He previously held senior joint positions as Director of the Joint Staff and as the Commander of the U.S. Transportation Command. He began his service as a pilot with the airlift evacuation out of Vietnam in 1975.

General Schwartz is a U.S. Air Force Academy graduate and holds a master’s degree in business administration from Central Michigan University. He is also an alumnus of the Armed Forces Staff College and the National War College.

He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a 1994 Fellow of Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Seminar XXI. General Schwartz has been married to Suzie since 1981.

Cybersecurity for Planes, Trains, and Tanks

Josh Lospinoso

CEO, Shift5

DoD Weapon Systems are choc-full of digital components. They are more networked and software dependent than ever before, but generally these systems were never designed with cybersecurity in mind. In recent operational testing, the DoD routinely found mission-critical cyber vulnerabilities. Disconcertingly simple tools and techniques were often enough for penetration testers to take control of weapon systems. Fortunately, the DoD is beginning to take weapon system cybersecurity seriously, but we have a long way to go as a cybersecurity community in developing solutions to address this dangerous new threat frontier. Additionally, civilian transportation assets like commercial aircraft, maritime vessels, freight/passenger rail, satellites, and road vehicles have corollary cybersecurity issues. As critical infrastructure, these systems are simultaneously more important and more vulnerable than ever before. In this talk, Josh will discuss how we got here, the magnitude of the problem, and what’s required to begin paying the debt.

About Josh Lospinoso

Josh Lospinoso is CEO of Shift5, a cybersecurity company protecting the world’s fleets from cyberattack. He is an entrepreneur with deep expertise in cybersecurity, data science, and system software engineering. In 2012, he co-founded RedOwl Analytics, an insider threat detection platform acquired by Raytheon/Forcepoint in 2017.

Josh is a US Army veteran, having served 10 years as a cyber officer leading teams to build dozens of cyber tools for the National Security Agency’s Tailored Access Operations, Army Cyber Command, and the Cyber National Mission Force.

Josh is the author of C++ Crash Course (No Starch Press, 2019), dozens of peer-reviewed journal articles spanning multiple disciplines, and multiple patents. He is a graduate of U.S. Army Ranger School, and he holds multiple degrees the United States Military Academy and a Ph.D. from the University of Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar.

He serves on the board of the American Association of Rhodes Scholars and is a member of the Programming Committee for the Hacker Initiative, a nonprofit supporting the worldwide hacker community. Josh is also a Venture Partner at First In, an early state investment firm.

Robustness and Conservativeness in Statistical Learning

Johannes O. Royset

Professor of Operations Research, Naval Postgraduate School

Despite impressive achievements over the last decade, statistical learning remains prone to errors when the training data is biased, corrupted, or mislabeled. Dr. Royset will discuss troubling situations from computer vision as well as military operations research and review approaches to enhance robustness and conservativeness. In particular, he proposes superquantile regression as an alternative to least-squares regression when the focus is on estimating distributional tail behavior. Computationally efficient approximations achieve robust training against adversarial interference. Diametrical risk minimization improves on classical empirical risk minimization by accounting for worst-case empirical risks within neighborhoods in a parameter space. He illustrates the empirical performance of the various approaches through examples such as training of neural networks using corrupted labels, and also discuss the theoretical performance of diametrical risk minimization under challenging non-convex, non-Lipschitz loss functions.

About Johannes Royset

Dr. Johannes O. Royset is a Professor of Operations Research at the Naval Postgraduate School. His research focuses on formulating and solving stochastic and deterministic optimization problems arising in data analytics, sensor management, and reliability engineering. Dr. Royset is the co-inventor of epi-splines, a functional approximation tool with wide applications in data fitting and forecasting, and of superquantile regression, second-order superquantile risk, and buffered probability. He was awarded a National Research Council postdoctoral fellowship in 2003, a Young Investigator Award from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research in 2007, and the Barchi Prize as well as the MOR Journal Award from the Military Operations Research Society in 2009. He received the Carl E. and Jessie W. Menneken Faculty Award for Excellence in Scientific Research in 2010 and the Goodeve Medal from the Operational Research Society in 2019. Dr. Royset was a plenary speaker at the International Conference on Stochastic Programming in 2016 and at the SIAM Conference on Uncertainty Quantification in 2018. He has a Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of California at Berkeley (2002). Dr. Royset has been an associate or guest editor of SIAM Journal on Optimization, Operations Research, Mathematical Programming, Journal of Optimization Theory and Applications, Naval Research Logistics, Journal of Convex Analysis, Set-Valued and Variational Analysis, and Computational Optimization and Applications. He has published more than 90 papers and two books.

Stochastic Modeling Challenges for Problems in the Security Domain

Rajan Batta

SUNY Distinguished Professor and Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs and Diversity, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, University at Buffalo

The security domain provides excellent problems for the operation research community. Security problems that have a stochastic component are particularly challenging to model and analyze successfully. In this keynote, Dr. Batta will discuss several security problems that he worked on with colleagues and graduate students that have a stochastic modeling component.

These include topics such as:

1. sensor deployment to detect movement of suspicious objects,
2. deployment and redeployment of an ad hoc sensor network with unreliable communication links,
3. strategic deployment of response units with uncertain future demands,
4. search for emerging objects in an area of interest, with and without camouflaging capabilities, and
5. strategies for infiltration into enemy territory.

About Rajan Batta

Rajan Batta is a SUNY distinguished professor in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering and the Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs and Diversity in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, at the University at Buffalo, where he has been a faculty member since 1984. He uses operations research techniques to develop and analyze mathematical models of systems critical to society. His research interests range from military logistics and homeland defense, to transportation planning and analysis of urban crime patterns. His recent work in the military domain has focused on search missions over uncertain networks. He has won numerous awards for his research and scholarship, including the MOR Journal Award from MORS (2005 and 2020), the Koopman Award from the INFORMS Military and Security Society (2108), and several research awards from the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers: Frank and Lillian Gilbreth Industrial Engineering Award (2022); Award for Technical Innovation in Industrial Engineering (2016); and David F. Baker Research Award (2008). Batta received his Ph.D. in operations research from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a bachelor of technology in mechanical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.

National Science Foundation (NSF) Program Managers Panel

Yueyue Fan

Professor, University of California, Davis
Program Manager, National Science Foundation

Dr. Fan will present the Civil Infrastructure Systems (CIS) program that supports fundamental and innovative research in the design, operation and management of civil infrastructure and contributes to creating smart, sustainable and resilient communities at local, national and international scales. The CIS program focuses on civil infrastructure as a system in which interactions between spatially- and functionally- distributed components and intersystem connections exist, and is interested in every critical civil infrastructure system, including transportation, power, water, pipelines, etc. The research themes addressing novel system and service design, system integration, big data analytics, and socio-technological-infrastructure connections and the research contributions—theoretical, scientific, mathematical, or computational—will be discussed.

About Yueyue Fan

Dr. Yueyue Fan is a professor in civil and environmental engineering at University of California, Davis. She is also a faculty member in graduate program of Applied Mathematics at UC Davis. She received her Ph.D. in civil engineering at University of Southern California in 2003. Dr. Fan’s research is on transportation and energy infrastructure systems modeling, with a special interest in integrating applied mathematics and engineering domain knowledge to address fundamental challenges brought by data and system uncertainty, dynamics, and underdetermined issues. Dr. Fan is currently serving as the program director of the Civil Infrastructure Systems (CIS) program at the National Science Foundation.

NSF Program: Civil Infrastructure Systems (CIS)

The Civil Infrastructure Systems (CIS) program supports fundamental and innovative research in the design, operation and management of civil infrastructure that contributes to creating smart, sustainable and resilient communities at local, national and international scales. This program focuses on civil infrastructure as a system in which interactions between spatially- and functionally- distributed components and intersystem connections exist. All critical civil infrastructure systems are of interest, including transportation, power, water, pipelines and others.

The CIS program encourages potentially disruptive ideas that will open new frontiers and significantly broaden and transform relevant research communities. The program particularly welcomes research that addresses novel system and service design, system integration, big data analytics, and socio-technological-infrastructure connections. The program values diverse theoretical, scientific, mathematical, or computational contributions from a broad set of disciplines.

While component-level, subject-matter knowledge may be crucial in many research efforts, the program does not support research with a primary contribution pertaining to individual infrastructure components such as materials, sensor technology, extreme event analysis, human factors, climate modeling, structural, geotechnical, hydrologic or environmental engineering.

Also: Cyber Physical Systems (CPS) and Smart and Connected Communities.

Paul Huth

Program Officer, National Science Foundation

Dr. Huth will present the Security and Preparedness (SAP) Program that supports basic scientific research advancing knowledge and understanding of issues broadly related to global and national security. Funded research should be theoretically motivated, conceptually precise, methodologically rigorous, and empirically oriented and could for example involve international relations, global and national security, human security, political violence, state stability, conflict processes, regime transition, international and comparative political economy, and peace science. Dr. Huth will also discuss other NSF programs that SAP co-reviews with on a regular basis.

About Paul Huth

Dr. Paul Huth is a program officer at the National Science Foundation for the Security & Preparedness Program within the Division of Social and Economic Sciences. He has served in this position for the past two years. Dr. Huth received his Ph.D. in political science from Yale University in 1986 and was a faculty member at the University of Michigan until 2005 and thereafter at the University of Maryland. In addition to his position at NSF, Dr. Huth is currently the Bauman Professor of Political Economy in the Government and Politics Department and Director of the Center for International Development and Conflict Management at the University of Maryland. He has served as editor of The Journal of Conflict Resolution since 2009. He has published widely on subjects relating to armed conflict and the resolution of international disputes, including multiple books and edited volumes as well as dozens of articles in leading academic journals. In recognition of his work he has received the Karl W. Deutsch Award, Quincy Wright Book Award, the Olof Palme Visiting Professor Award, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Political Science Association. In support of his research Dr. Huth has received external grants and contracts from the National Science Foundation, United States Institute of Peace, Smith Richardson Foundation, the Minerva Program at DOD, USAID, and UK DFID.

NSF Program: Security and Preparedness (SAP)

The Security and Preparedness (SAP) Program supports basic scientific research that advances knowledge and understanding of issues broadly related to global and national security. Research proposals are evaluated on the criteria of intellectual merit and broader impacts; the proposed projects are expected to be theoretically motivated, conceptually precise, methodologically rigorous, and empirically oriented. Substantive areas include (but are not limited to) international relations, global and national security, human security, political violence, state stability, conflict processes, regime transition, international and comparative political economy, and peace science. Moreover, the Program supports research experiences for undergraduate students and infrastructural activities, including methodological innovations. The Program does not fund applied research. In addition, we encourage you to examine the websites for the National Science Foundation’s Accountable Institutions and Behavior (AIB) and Law and Science (LS) programs.

Besides the Security and Preparedness Program, Dr. Huth will also discuss other NSF programs that SAP co-reviews with on a regular basis.

Daan Liang

Program Director for Human, Disaster, and Built Environment (HDBE), National Science Foundation

Dr. Liang will present the Humans, Disasters, and the Built Environment (HDBE) program that supports fundamental, multidisciplinary research on the interactions between humans and the built environment within and among communities exposed to natural, technological and other types of hazards and disasters. The HDBE program seeks research that integrates ongoing and emerging changes in three interwoven elements of a community: its population, its built environment (critical infrastructures, physical and virtual spaces, and buildings and related structures) and the hazards and disasters to which it is exposed. The HDBE program seeks research that advances theories, methods and data within and across diverse disciplines, whether in engineering, the social sciences, computing or other relevant fields. Research funded by the HDBE program should inform how communities can cultivate and engage a broad range of physical, social and other resources to ensure improved quality of life for their inhabitants.

About Daan Liang

Dr. Daan Liang is the Program Director for the Human, Disaster, and Built Environment program at the National Science Foundation. The program supports fundamental, multidisciplinary research on the interactions between humans and the built environment within and among communities exposed to natural, technological, and other types of hazards and disasters. Prior to his current IPA assignment, Dr. Liang is a professor in the Department of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering and the Director of Center for Sustainable Infrastructure (CSI) at the University of Alabama. His research interests include wind damage assessment, recovery, and mitigation, community resilience to natural hazards, risk transfer and hedging, and construction engineering. He has been supported by grants and contracts from National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. Department of Commerce, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Texas Department of Transportation, private industry, and charitable foundation. Dr. Liang co-founded and co-directed an NSF Industry-University Cooperative Research Center (IUCRC) on Wind Hazard and Infrastructure Performance (WHIP). Dr. Liang has held various academic and administrative positions at Texas Tech University. Dr. Liang received his bachelor’s degree in engineering management from Tianjin University, China in 1997 and both his MS (1999) and Ph.D. (2001) in civil engineering from University of Buffalo, New York. He is a licensed professional engineer in Texas.

NSF Program: Humans, Disasters, and the Built Environment

The HDBE program supports fundamental, multidisciplinary research on the interactions between humans and the built environment within and among communities exposed to natural, technological and other types of hazards and disasters. The program’s context is provided by ongoing and emerging changes in three interwoven elements of a community: its population, its built environment (critical infrastructures, physical and virtual spaces, and buildings and related structures) and the hazards and disasters to which it is exposed. The HDBE program seeks research that integrates these elements and that can contribute to theories that hold over a broad range of scales and conditions. Examples include but are not limited to unified frameworks and theoretical models that encompass non-hazard to extreme hazard and disaster conditions, theoretical and empirical studies that consider how interactions between a community’s population and its built environment may suppress or amplify hazard exposure or its effects, and studies that seek to inform scholarship through the development of shared data and related resources. In these and other areas funded through the HDBE program, research that challenges conventional wisdom on the interactions among humans, the built environment and hazards and disasters is particularly encouraged. Given the richness of the phenomena under study, the HDBE program seeks research that advances theories, methods and data within and across diverse disciplines, whether in engineering, the social sciences, computing or other relevant fields. Ultimately, research funded through this program is expected to inform how communities can cultivate and engage a broad range of physical, social and other resources to ensure improved quality of life for their inhabitants.