CyberSMART Public Seminar - USA National Science Foundation IUCRC Smart Centre and Virginia Tech

Guest Lecture

Talk 1 (Introductory talk) : Prof. Ophir Frieder, Georgetown University and Prof. Jarek Nabrzyski, University of Notre Dame.
Duration: 30 minutes

Abstract:

The NSF Industry-University Cooperative Research Center (IUCRC) for Science, Management, Applications, Regulation, and Training (CyberSMART) is a multidisciplinary hub for advancing cyber research and education. Established in 2019 at Georgetown University and later joined by the University of Notre Dame and Virginia Tech, CyberSMART integrates computer science with social, economic, behavioral, and cognitive sciences to tackle complex cyber challenges. Its research focuses on key areas such as distributed ledger technology, secure systems, artificial intelligence, post-quantum cybersecurity, and digital privacy. By uniting leading researchers and industry partners, CyberSMART drives innovation, strengthens U.S. technological leadership, and develops a diverse, skilled workforce to meet the demands of the evolving cyber landscape.

Speakers Biography

Prof. Dr. Ophir Frieder is the Director of the CyberSMART Center and a distinguished researcher in scalable information processing systems, with a focus on health informatics. He is a Fellow of numerous prestigious organizations, including AAAS, ACM, AIMBE, IEEE, and NAI. Dr. Frieder has been recognized with the ASIS&T Research in Information Science Award for medical informatics and the IEEE Edward J. McCluskey Technical Achievement Award. He serves on the computer science faculty at Georgetown University and holds a concurrent position in the biostatistics, bioinformatics, and biomathematics faculty at Georgetown University Medical Center.

Prof. Dr. Jarek Nabrzyski is the CyberSMART Executive Director, Site Director at the University of Notre Dame, and the Executive Director for Distributed Ledger Technology and Digital Forensics Lab. He is the founding director of the Center for Research Computing at Notre Dame and holds the position of Vice President for Research Fellow. Nabrzyski's research interests span cyberinfrastructure for scientific applications and the use of distributed ledger technologies to enhance supply chain visibility, traceability, and AI system safety. He is known for his ability to foster collaborations between academia and industry to address complex scientific and industrial challenges.

Talk 2 (Technical talk) : Prof Wenjing Lou, Virginia Tech.
Title: Rethinking Privacy Protection in Federated Learning in the Face of Model Inversion Attacks
Duration: 45 minutes

Abstract:

Federated learning enables collaborative machine learning while preserving the privacy of individual datasets. However, it is not immune to privacy threats. This talk focuses on model inversion attacks (MIAs), where malicious entities exploit model updates to reconstruct users' private data. It traces the evolution of MIAs, from early optimization-based approaches to the advanced Scale-MIA, a state-of-the-art attack capable of reconstructing training samples even under secure aggregation protocols. The discussion will highlight the vulnerabilities these attacks reveal and their impact on traditional privacy-preserving measures in federated learning, emphasizing the need for enhanced security in this distributed framework.

Speakers Biography

Prof. Dr. Wenjing Lou is the W. C. English Endowed Professor of Computer Science at Virginia Tech and a Fellow of the IEEE and ACM. Her research interests cover many topics in the cybersecurity field, with her current research interest focusing on security and privacy problems in wireless networks, blockchain, trustworthy machine learning, and Internet of Things (IoT) systems. Prof. Lou is a highly cited researcher by the Web of Science Group. She received the Virginia Tech Alumni Award for Research Excellence in 2018, the highest university-level faculty research award. She received the INFOCOM Test-of-Time paper award in 2020. She is the TPC chair for IEEE INFOCOM 2019 and ACM WiSec 2020. She was the Steering Committee Chair for IEEE CNS conference from 2013 to 2020. She is currently the vice chair of IEEE INFOCOM and a steering committee member of IEEE CNS. She served as a program director at the US National Science Foundation (NSF) from 2014 to 2017.