CCI funds $1 million in scalable experiential learning projects across Virginia

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April 2021

Taking it to the streets: Commonwealth Cyber Initiative funds research for autonomous cars

A Message from the Executive Director

Dear Colleagues,

We’re excited to announce our first Cyber Camp for Virginia undergraduate students. We’ll be holding it virtually on three consecutive Saturdays––July 31, August 7, and August 14, 2021.

Please share this information with undergrads you know. Students will polish their cybersecurity and job interviewing skills. They’ll compete in challenges, including several created by David Oranchak, who last year helped crack the 340-character cryptogram of the Zodiac Killer.

There’s a qualifying event in early May to attend the camp so students must register by May 6. For information about the camp and how to qualify, please visit the camp webpage.

Experiential Learning Projects

We’ve funded $1 million in seven scalable experiential learning projects across Virginia to help give students the hands-on learning experience they need to build a career in cybersecurity. The cybersecurity-focused projects include autonomous systems, ports, startups, biosecurity, electrical power systems, and more. These projects also are designed to serve as blueprints to help other institutions launch successful cybersecurity internship programs and incorporate experiential learning into their curricula.

If you drive around Arlington at night, you may spot CCI Fellow Duminda Wijesekera and his George Mason University engineering team driving Toyota Corollas equipped with sensors and cameras that simulate a self-driving car. The $1 million CCI-funded project also includes researchers from Virginia Tech and Old Dominion University.

Kate Sicchio, assistant professor of Dance and Media Technologies at Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of the Arts, is working on “Moving Choreography to a New Universe: an AI-Driven Privacy Automation Approach.”

The video shows Sicchio’s research assistant Tamara Denson, a VCU dance major, being motion tracked for the CCI project. Sicchio’s team is collecting movement data to see how they can potentially train AI to be used to protect the identity of those being tracked.

Cybersecurity helps protect the food we grow, especially as agriculture becomes increasingly digital. New strategies, efficiencies, and approaches are essential to producing enough food to feed a growing global population, says Susan Duncan, associate director of the Virginia Agricultural Experiment Station at Virginia Tech. CCI co-sponsored a workshop last fall that brought together 170 experts to discuss how cyberbiosecurity is changing how we produce food. Learn more about the top takeaways.

TOP TAKEAWAYS

Showing Off Our New Equipment

Allow me to introduce you to the DGX-A100, a new coworker at the CCI AI Assurance Testbed. While the DGX-A100 may look low-key, this machine gives state of the art speed for AI workloads, far outpacing the performance of previous generations by more than 10 times. This significantly reduces a data scientist’s iteration time to develop AI solutions. Some of the largest deep learning models can take weeks to train - they now take hours.

Up for the Challenge?

We’ll soon be announcing the Virginia Cybersecurity Challenge. Virginia researchers will compete to develop a cybersecurity prototype that leverages emerging 5G technologies to provide secure operations or communications in ways not possible on previous generation networks. We expect the prototype to ultimately develop into a commercial product. Undergraduate and graduate students are encouraged to participate actively on researcher-led teams. CCI has partnered with US Ignite for this competition.

Bridging the Innovation Funding Gap

We want to help bridge the gap between pre-seed and seed funding for Virginia university-affiliated cyber technologies. Our goal is to enhance pre-product, cybersecurity innovation companies/university projects by developing a cyber technology prototype to attract seed/series-A funding.

We’re especially looking for applications that include the overlapping areas of cyber-physical systems, autonomous systems, robotic process automation, critical infrastructure, and endpoint security.