Comprehensive Engineering Conference
With four exclusive parallel conference tracks, this year’s IEEE-FW Section MetroCon provides one of the strongest programs ever, allowing the attendee to rapidly grasp the technical and societal implications of some of our most promising and innovative new developments. Each track has been organized in well coordinated morning and afternoon sessions to help achieve maximum exposure in minimum time.
This year's keynote speaker will be Dr. Bhavani Thuraisingham,
the Louis A. Beecherl, Jr. Distinguished Professor
in the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science at The University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) effective September 2010.
She joined UTD in October 2004 as a Professor of Computer Science and Director of the Cyber Security Research Center which conducts research in data security and privacy, social media, data mining and semantic web. The Center also hosts the newly created Assured Information Sharing Institute with funding from a DoD MURI project. She is an elected Fellow of three professional organizations: the IEEE (Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers), the AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) and the BCS (British Computer Society). She is the recipient of numerous prestigious awards including the IEEE Computer Society’s 1997 Technical Achievement Award for “outstanding and innovative contributions to secure data management.”
Prior to joining UTD, Dr. Thuraisingham was an IPA (Intergovernmental Personnel Act)at the National Science Foundation (NSF) in Arlington, VA, from the MITRE Corporation for three years. At NSF she established the Data and Applications Security Program and co-founded the Cyber Trust theme and was involved in interagency activities in data mining for counter-terrorism. She worked at MITRE in Bedford, MA between January 1989 and September 2001, first in the Information Security Center and later as a department head in Data and Information Management as well as Chief Scientist in Data Management in the Intelligence and Air Force centers. At MITRE she led large concurrent team research and development efforts on data management, data mining and data security for NSA, AFRL, SPAWAR, CECOM and CIA. She also served as a technical consultant in information security and data management to the Department of Defense, the Department of Treasury and the Intelligence Community for over 10 years and served as an expert consultant to the Department of Justice on software research credit cases. Thuraisingham’s industry experience includes six years of research and development as well as technology transfer at Control Data Corp. and Honeywell Inc. in Minneapolis.
Dr. Thuraisingham’s work in data management, data mining and data security has resulted in over 100 journal articles, over 200 refereed conference papers and workshops, three US patents and several IP disclosures. She is the author of ten books including one on data mining for counter-terrorism, another on Database and Applications Security and a third on Secure Semantic Service-Oriented Information Systems. She has given over 70 keynote presentations and has given invited talks at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and at the United Nations on Data Mining for counter-terrorism. She has been an instructor at AFCEA’s (Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association) Professional Development Center since 1998 with students from the DoD, DHS, FBI and the Intelligence Community. She served on panels for the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board and the National Academy of Sciences including one on protecting children from inappropriate content on the Internet chaired by Hon. Dick Thornburgh (former US Attorney General) in 2000. During her six years at UTD, Dr. Thuraisingham has established and leads a strong research program in Assured Information Sharing and Data Mining with funding from agencies such as NSF, AFOSR, IARPA, NGA, NASA, ONR, ARO and NIH as well as corporations such as Raytheon Inc. She teaches courses in data and applications security, trustworthy semantic services and digital forensics and collaborates with the DFW corporations as well as North Texas Regional Computer Forensics Laboratory for student projects.
Dr. Thuraisingham is the founding president of “Bhavani Security Consulting, LLC” a company providing services in consulting and training in Information Technology to the US federal government. She is also the founder and a member of the board of directors of “Infosec Analytics, LLC”, a spin-off company from UTD developing tools in malware detection and information sharing. She was educated in the United Kingdom both at the University of Bristol and the University of Wales with degrees in Mathematics and Computer Science and she recently completed a Certificate in Terrorism Studies from St. Andrews University, Scotland.
Four exciting tracks and our lunchtime keynote speaker will make this year’s MetroCon one that will be hard to forget. We hope to see you all there!
-- The 2010 IEEE-FW MetroCon Organizing Committee