Cybersecurity Conference (2015) Speaker Profiles
Nada Marie Anid, Ph.D.
Professor and Dean
School of Engineering and Computing Sciences
Dr. Anid earned her Ph.D. in environmental engineering from the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor), and bachelor's and master's degrees in chemical engineering from the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH-Stockholm). She is among the first engineers to study the role of vitamin B12 and other organometallic coenzymes in the dechlorination of important toxic molecules such as carbon tetrachloride and polychlorinated biphenyls. Prior to joining NYIT, she was chair and graduate program director of the Chemical Engineering Department at Manhattan College.
She has been named one of the top 50 most influential women in business in recognition of her business acumen, mentoring, and community involvement by Long Island Business News and as a third-time honoree, was recently inducted into the LIBN Hall of Fame. Dr. Anid also received the 2010 Long Island Software and Technology Network (LISTnet) Diamond Award in recognition of her significant contributions toward the advancement of women in technology on Long Island as well as for her professional achievements in the technology field.
Nada Marie Anid, Ph.D., is the first female dean of NYIT's School of Engineering and Computing Sciences (SoECS). In this role, she oversees 77 engineering and computing sciences faculty members and approximately 1,700 graduate and undergraduate students at campuses located in Manhattan and Old Westbury, N.Y., the Middle East, and China.
Kiran Balagani, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Computer Science
NYIT
Kiran Balagani, Ph.D., co-directs the cybersecurity laboratory in the NYIT School of Engineering and Computing Sciences and conducts research in behavioral biometrics, biometric security, privacy, and anomaly detection. His research has appeared in several leading peer-reviewed security journals and at conferences. He has three U.S. patents related to network-centric attack detection.
In addition, Balagani teaches graduate and undergraduate courses such as Computer Networks, Artificial Intelligence, and Network and Perimeter Security. He also created the new graduate course Biometrics and Its Applications in a Networked Society.
Gale A. Brewer
Manhattan Borough President
City of New York
Gale A. Brewer is the 27th Manhattan Borough President. Brewer previously served on the City Council for 12 years. As councilmember, she successfully passed legislation guaranteeing paid sick leave for most hourly employees, compelling landlords to fix repeat violations, requiring all city data be published online, and implementing the nation's first law protecting domestic workers. She was the founding chair of the Council's Technology Committee in 2002.
Immediately prior to her election to the City Council, Brewer served as project manager for the NYC Nonprofits Project at CUNY's Graduate Center, and before that worked for the Telesis Corporation, a private firm that builds affordable housing in New York City
Prior to her nonprofit and private-sector experiences, Brewer served in city government in various roles, including as New York City Deputy Public Advocate, Director of Mayor David Dinkins' Federal Office in New York City, Executive Director of the Mayor's Commission on the Status of Women, and Chief of Staff to West Side Council Member Ruth W. Messinger.
Brewer has an M.P.A. from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. She did her undergraduate work at Columbia University and Bennington College.
Gregory Conti, Ph.D.
Associate Professor and Director
Army Cyber Institute, U.S. Military Academy at West Point
Gregory Conti has a B.S. from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, an M.S. from Johns Hopkins University, and a Ph.D. from Georgia Institute of Technology—all in computer science. He is the author of the books Security Data Visualization (No Starch Press) and Googling Security (Addison-Wesley), and has published over 75 articles and papers on cyber conflict, online privacy, usable security, and security data visualization. Conti has published academic research in a variety of scholarly venues and spoken at numerous security conferences, including Black Hat, DEF CON, CyCon, HOPE, Interz0ne, ShmooCon, and RSA. For more information about his work, follow him on Twitter @cyberbgone and visit his website at gregconti.com.
Peter M. Curtis (B.T. '83, M.S. '95)
President and Chief Executive Officer
Power Management Concepts, LLC
Peter Curtis is the founder of Power Management Concepts, LLC, an engineering, research, and technology company formed in 1998. He has been at the forefront of developing new technology innovations for products such as M.C. Access, GreenBUS, and SmartWALK, along with the development of education content and learning management systems—all to reduce human error and improve energy security for the digital society.
Curtis has over 30 years of experience working in the mission critical engineering industry for Bankers Trust/Deutsche Bank, Securities Industry Automation Company, Suffolk County Water Authority, and Sperry Corporation. He has been responsible for critical systems design, construction, operations, energy, and budgets for multi-megawatt infrastructures, and oversaw a major railroad electrification project.
In addition, Curtis is an adjunct professor at NYIT and serves on the Dean's Executive Advisory Board of the School of Engineering and Computing Sciences. He also teaches at Marist College.
Curtis is the author of two books on mission critical facilities operations and a frequent speaker on behalf of the International Facility Management Association, Association for Facilities Engineering (AFE), and DatacenterDynamics. He also serves as educational advisor for AFE and has provided briefings to the White House on critical infrastructure protection.
Ziqian (Cecilia) Dong, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering
NYIT
Ziqian (Cecilia) Dong, Ph.D., received her B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics and her graduate degrees from New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT), including an M.S. in Electrical Engineering and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering. NJIT awarded Dong the Hashimoto Prize for the best Ph.D. dissertation in electrical engineering. She is the recipient of 2006 and 2007 Hashimoto Fellowships for outstanding scholarship as well as the New Jersey Inventors Hall of Fame Graduate Student Award for her inventions in network switches.
Dong's research interests include architecture design and analysis of practical buffered crossbar packet switches, network security and forensics, wireless sensor networks, social networks and assistive medical devices. She was associated with NJIT's Networking Research Laboratory and the MySYNC Laboratory at Stevens Institute of Technology for her postdoctoral research. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), Motorola Solutions, National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance, and NYIT. She is the principal investigator and a faculty mentor for the NSF-funded Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) Program on smartphone and wireless network security at NYIT. She also serves as faculty mentor for NYIT's student chapter of the Society of Women Engineers.
In addition, Dong is a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Communications Society and IEEE Women in Engineering, as well as a member of the American Society for Engineering Education and Association for Computing Machinery. She has served on numerous technical program committees and served as a reviewer for IEEE journals, conferences, and NSF panels.
Idan Edry
Chief Technology Officer
Nation-E
Idan Edry has over 14 years of experience in the fields of information technology (IT) communications and data security. He served eight years as an officer in the Israeli Air Force, leading a team of 250 soldiers in special operations and building new systems until he was honorably discharged with the rank of captain. During this time, he accumulated 13 degrees and certificates of the highest levels from the world's most renowned IT, data security, and telecommunications and encryptions institutes.
Before joining Nation-E, Edry worked for three years at Pelephone as the head of data and security for the company's strategically important clients, such as leading organizations, top government officials, and others.
Rob Evans
Director of Business Development, Air Command and Control Solutions
Division of Information Systems, Northrop Grumman
In 2012, Rob Evans joined Northrop Grumman, a leading provider of open and interoperable command and control systems across land, air, and maritime domains as well as critical infrastructure protection services and capabilities. Prior to Northrop Grumman, Evans served in the U.S. Air Force. He has over 28 years of experience in strategy and policy development, command and control, and operational employment of air and space power in support of national security objectives. Evans earned a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering Technology from California State University, a Master of Science in Computer Information Systems from Boston University, a Master of Military Arts and Science from the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, and a Master of Strategic Studies from the Air War College.
Siddharth Garg, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering
NYU Polytechnic School of Engineering
Siddharth Garg received his Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University and a B.Tech. in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras. He joined NYU in fall 2014 as an assistant professor, and prior to that, was an assistant professor at University of Waterloo from 2010 to 2014. His general research interests are in computer engineering, particularly secure, reliable, and energy-efficient computing.
For his research, Garg has received best paper awards at the 2013 USENIX Security Symposium, the 2010 Semiconductor Research Consortium TECHCON, and the 2009 International Symposium on Quality in Electronic Design. He also received the Angel G. Jordan Award from the electrical and computer engineering department of Carnegie Mellon University for outstanding thesis contributions and service to the community. Garg serves on the technical program committee of several top conferences in the area of computer engineering and computer hardware, and has been a reviewer for several IEEE and ACM journals.
Paolo Gasti, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Computer Science
NYIT
As a faculty member in NYIT's School of Engineering and Computing Sciences, Paolo Gasti, Ph.D., focuses his research on behavioral biometrics, privacy-preserving biometric authentication and identification, secure multi-party protocols, and network security. His recent work includes protocols for secure genomic computation, document similarity, document caching, and distributed denial-of-service detection and prevention in future Internet architectures.
Gasti served as a member of the Named-Data Networking Project, an initiative sponsored by the National Science Foundation with the goal of designing a new network architecture that eventually replaces the current Internet. His work has been featured in articles in the New Scientist and MIT Technological Review.
Prior to NYIT, Gasti worked as a research scholar at University of California, Irvine, and received a Fulbright scholarship to visit Johns Hopkins University. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from University of Genoa, Italy, where he researched the design of cryptographic schemes and network security.
Edward Guiliano, Ph.D.
President
New York Institute of Technology
Edward Guiliano has led New York Institute of Technology (NYIT) to worldwide prestige, particularly in the fields of architecture, medicine, communications, engineering, business, and educational technology.
An eloquent spokesman and advocate for the environment and sustainability, global higher education, and educational technology, Dr. Guiliano is a frequent keynote speaker at conferences around the globe. Since he became the university's president in 2000, NYIT has significantly increased the size and quality of its diverse student body of 13,000 students from nearly 50 U.S. states and 100 nations this year; added more than 400 distinguished faculty members; and opened campuses and sites in North America, the Middle East, Asia, and online to complement NYIT's hub campuses in Manhattan and Long Island, New York.
During this time, NYIT has undergone a major renovation of campus facilities while branding itself to raise its national and international profile. The administration also created a 2030 strategic plan to position NYIT as a model for a 21st-century global university. NYIT has been consistently ranked as one of America's best colleges by leading publications.
In March 2012, in recognition of Dr. Guiliano's commitment, scholarship, philanthropy, and transformational long-standing leadership, NYIT named its flagship Manhattan campus building on Broadway the Edward Guiliano Global Center.
Dr. Guiliano holds a bachelor's degree from Brown University and a doctorate from Stony Brook University. He has been awarded two honorary degrees and received the Ellis Island Medal of Honor for his personal accomplishments, social compassion, and outstanding contributions to American society. He is married to best-selling author Mireille Guiliano.
Angelos Keromytis, Ph.D.
Program Manager, Information Innovation Office
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, U.S. Department of Defense
Angelos Keromytis, Ph.D., joined the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in July 2014. His research interests include computer systems, network security, and cryptography.
Keromytis came to DARPA from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Division of Computer and Network Systems, where he was responsible for the Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace Program and the NSF/Intel Labs partnership on cyber-physical systems security and privacy.
He is currently on leave from Columbia University in New York City, where he is an associate professor in the computer science department. Keromytis was also the chief architect of Allure Security Technology Inc., a company that he co-founded to commercialize technology that protects against information leakage/exfiltration and provides early warning, as well as possible identification, of malicious insiders in an organization. He is an active participant in the Internet Engineering Task Force , specifically its working groups in Internet Protocol Security (IPsec) and Internet Protocol Security Protocol . He contributed to the Open Berkeley Software Distribution (OpenBSD) operating system, serving as the primary author of the IPsec stack and the OpenBSD Cryptographic Framework, which was later ported to FreeBSD and NetBSD.
Keromytis holds a Bachelor of Science from the University of Crete (1996), a Master of Science from the University of Pennsylvania (1997), and a Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Pennsylvania (2001)—all in computer science. He has published extensively on the topics of computer science and information security, including over 40 articles in refereed journals and over 130 conference papers. He is co-inventor of 30 patents and in 2012 was elected an Association for Computing Machinery Distinguished Scientist.
John Kimmins
Senior Security Director
iconectiv
As the senior security director at iconectiv, John Kimmins has a leading role at a global telecommunications company that specializes in number portability and information services. He has worked with governments, global service providers, international suppliers, utilities, financial services organizations and enterprises to identify vulnerabilities and implement tactical and strategic security solutions.
Kimmins has pioneered security risk assessment methodologies for the smart grid, supply chain risk management, broadband networking, 4G mobile technology, and Internet Protocol TV, and contributed to various standards forums. He was awarded the prestigious Fellow Award while at Telcordia Technologies for his contributions to the security of the public telecommunications infrastructure. He is also a Certified Information System Security Professional.
Nasir Memon, Ph.D.
Professor, Computer Science and Engineering Department
NYU Polytechnic School of Engineering
Nasir Memon, Ph.D., is the founder and director of the Information Systems and Internet Security Laboratory at NYU Polytechnic School of Engineering. He is also the founding director of NYU's Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Security and Privacy a collaborative initiative of multiple schools within NYU, including Steinhardt, Wagner, Stern, and Courantas as well as the university's Abu Dhabi campus
Memon is an affiliate faculty member in the computer science department of the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at NYU.
His research interests include digital forensics, biometrics, data compression, network security, and human behavior and security
Memon earned a B.E. in Chemical Engineering and an M.S. in Mathematics from BITS Pilani, India. He received an M.S. and Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Nebraska.
He has published over 250 articles in journals and conference proceedings and holds a dozen patents in image compression and security. He has won several honors including the Jacobs Excellence in Education Award and several best paper awards. He has served on the editorial boards of many journals and was the editor-in-chief of IEEE Transactions on Information Security and Forensics, a publication of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers.
Memon is an IEEE fellow and an SPIE fellow for his contributions to image compression and multimedia security and forensics. He co-founded the Digital Assembly and Vivic Networks, two early-stage start-ups in NYU Polytechnic's business incubators.
Shaun Mooney (B.S. '95, M.S. '04)
Director of Infrastructure
Colliers International
Shaun Mooney (B.S. '95, M.S. '04) has more than 25 years of experience in real estate operations and management. For the past 15 years, he has directed infrastructure for 60 Hudson St., an international telecommunications hub in New York City. His workplace is home to the industry's largest data centers and the core of a vast underground fiber-optic network fueling the digital age. Mooney oversees construction of the facility, including review and approval of the building tenants' construction projects, and leads the team managing facility operations. He also interacts regularly with federal and New York City joint terrorism taskforce representatives to maintain secure operations of networks.
Mooney's success at maintaining a stable network facility has landed him in the media. He has been featured in Newsweek and TED Talks. He is a member of 7x24 Exchange and the New York chapter of the Building Owners and Managers Association. He is also a former U.S. Marine and volunteer firefighter, licensed operating engineer, thermographer, and emergency action director. Outside of work, he enjoys running, hiking and camping with his two children.
Monique Morrow
Chief Technology Officer
Cisco
As of November 2014, Monique Morrow is the Chief Technology Officer (CTO)—Evangelist for New Frontiers Development and Engineering at Cisco. Morrow was the first CTO of Cisco Services from June 2013 to November 2014 when she led the development of Cisco Services Technologies mapped to Services Customer Solution Reference Architecture that is now foundational for the implementation of Cisco Customer Solutions.
Her track record of co-innovating with customers transcends the globe from North America to Europe to Asia. Morrow's specialties are networking technology; grid, cloud computing, Intercloud-Federation, and the Internet of Things; machine-to-machine security and e-health; semantic web; and business development.
Morrow's current focus is on the intersection between research, economics, technology, and portfolio execution, such as her work on circular and exponential economies.
Ronald Mraz, Ph.D.
President and Chief Executive Officer
Owl Computing Technologies, Inc.
Ronald Mraz, Ph.D., directs advanced development of secure data transfer systems. With more than 20 years of private sector experience in a variety of technical positions including major research facilities at Westinghouse and IBM, he began his career developing microprocessor controls for switching power converter systems with Westinghouse Research. Mraz then participated in the development of several high-performance vector and supercomputing systems for IBM Server and Research Divisions. Additionally, he developed metrics for analyzing communication hardware in high-performance networks for super computer and real-time applications such as streaming video transmission.
Mraz received his Doctor of Electrical and Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 1992. He has a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering from Syracuse University and a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Drexel University. He is a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers and a member of both the Association for Computing Machinery, and the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association. He holds eight patents and has published more than 12 articles in the field of computer engineering.
Andy Ozment, Ph.D.
Assistant Secretary, Office of Cybersecurity and Communications
National Protections and Programs Directorate, U.S. Department of Homeland Security
In this role at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Andy Ozment, Ph.D., oversees a budget of almost $930 million and leads a federal employee workforce charged with enhancing the security, resilience, and reliability of the nation's cyber and communications infrastructure.
Prior to joining DHS, Ozment served at the White House as President Barack Obama's Senior Director for Cybersecurity, where he led a team that developed national policy and coordinated federal cybersecurity efforts in the areas of critical infrastructure protection, cybersecurity legislation, executive branch security, privacy and civil liberties, information sharing, and incident response. He developed and implemented the president's Executive Order 13636 on Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity, the Cross Agency Priority goal for cybersecurity, and the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace.
Previously, Ozment served in cybersecurity roles in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, National Security Agency, Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Lincoln Laboratory, Merrill Lynch, and Nortel Networks.
Ozment earned a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Georgia Institute of Technology, a Master of Science in International Relations from the London School of Economics, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Cambridge.
Danielle Santos
Program Manager, Cybersecurity Formal Education
Cybersecurity Education and Awareness Branch
U.S. Department of Homeland Security
In her role for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Danielle Santos supports the agency's National Cybersecurity Training and Education Program in its mission to grow the cybersecurity workforce by providing access and opportunities in cybersecurity formal education and hands-on learning. Her core activities include the Scholarship for Service Program, Centers for Academic Excellence, Cybersecurity Education and Training Assistance Program, and cybersecurity competitions.
Santos holds bachelor degrees in cybersecurity and economics from California State University, San Bernardino. She is a Scholarship for Service recipient and is fulfilling her commitment to government service at DHS.
Sabine Schilg
Vice President of M&A Integrations
IBM's Security Division
Throughout the years, Sabine Schilg has helped IBM to succeed in the areas of mergers and acquisitions (M&A), product management, product marketing, marketing, and business development as well as in designing and transforming social and collaboration strategies for the company's top 100 accounts. Schilg has developed a unique vision on what drive business success and growth in IBM's security business through integration of newly acquired companies that complement the company's values, including Trusteer, Fiberlink, CrossIdeas, Lighthouse, and Cybertap.
Schilg previously served as chief marketing officer for IBM's Software Group in Europe. In this role, She led the marketing and communication efforts for IBM's leading software brands Under her leadership, and using IBM's predictive analytics technology, Schilg guided partner organizations in which activities yield the best returns.
In addition, Schilg led IBM's integration of several social and analytics acquisitions, including Cognos Europe, SPSS, and Bowstreet. She has also held leadership positions in the company's areas of product management, software as a service, smart card solutions, chip and mainframe technologies.
Schilg has a master's degree in mathematics and an M.B.A.
Paul Silba
Director of Cyber Security
New York Power Authority
Paul Silba has been in the information technology (IT) field for nearly 20 years, including the past 15 at New York Power Authority (NYPA), where he works on intrusion prevention, systems hardening, security auditing, and building cyber security into IT projects as they are planned, among other tasks. He leads a team of cyber security professionals who work hard to protect NYPA from cyber security issues, including those related to the power grid.
Silba is a member of the New York City Metro FBI Infragard Program and has presented on several cyber security topics. He is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional, a Certified Information Security Manager, and a Microsoft Certified Solutions Expert. When he is not protecting cyber assets, Silba is outside walking in the woods with his dog, Buddy, or riding his electric bike.
Salvatore J. Stolfo, Ph.D.
Tenured Professor of Computer Science
Columbia University
Salvatore J. Stolfo, Ph.D., is a leading expert in computer security. He received a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and Mathematics from Brooklyn College in 1974 and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from NYU Courant Institute in 1979, and has been on the faculty of Columbia University ever since.
Stolfo is known for his research in machine learning applied to computer security, intrusion detection systems, anomaly detection algorithms and systems, fraud detection, and parallel computing. He pioneered research in a number of areas within computer security that are widely in use today. He has published or co-authored over 250 papers and has over 21,000 citations.
Jonathan Voris, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Computer Science
NYIT
Jonathan Voris received his Ph.D. from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Polytechnic Institute of NYU in Brooklyn, N.Y. He earned bachelor's and master's degrees in computer science from Stevens Institute of Technology in 2006 and 2007, respectively. Prior to his academic career, Voris worked as a software engineer and network manager for companies in the New York metropolitan area.
Before joining NYIT, Voris had appointments at Columbia University as an adjunct assistant professor in the computer science department and as a postdoctoral research scientist in the Intrusion Detection Systems Lab.
Voris conducts research on the security, privacy, and usability of systems, particularly emerging mobile and embedded platforms. His work has been published at a variety of venues including TETC, FC, PerCom, WiSec, and SOUPS.
Allison Wikoff
Intelligence Analyst and Security Researcher
Counter Threat Unit, Dell SecureWorks
Allison Wikoff is an information security professional with over a decade of experience. As a member of the Counter Threat Unit of Dell SecureWorks she is responsible for developing and supporting the company's threat intelligence management system.
Prior to joining Dell SecureWorks, Wikoff performed incident response, penetration testing, and threat intelligence analysis activities for a large private bank. In addition to working in financial services, she has also held information security positions in healthcare and consumer goods manufacturing. She earned a bachelor's degree in decision and information sciences from University of Florida and a master's degree in technology management from Columbia University, and holds numerous industry certifications.