CyLab celebrates 20 years of cybersecurity leadership at its 2023 Partners Conference

CyLab celebrated 20 years of collaborating on cutting-edge research and educating the next generation of security and privacy professionals at its annual Partners Conference.

The conference, which was held October 3-5 at Carnegie Mellon University, highlighted the latest research in security and privacy with an interactive forum between faculty, students, industry, and government.

The hybrid event included three student poster sessions and a forum featuring more than 40 faculty and student presentations that focused on various aspects of seven topic areas, including:

• Generative AI and Machine learning
• System and hardware security
• IoT security and privacy
• Human factors in privacy and security
• Software security
• Blockchain and crypto
• Privacy

This year’s conference also included a special 20-Year panel, featuring CyLab leaders from throughout its two-decade history, sharing personal stories and memories of how CyLab grew from an idea amongst a few CMU faculty members into a worldwide leader in providing expertise on security and privacy issues.

“Looking back, I don’t think [CyLab] could have been created at any other place except CMU,” said Pradeep Khosla, Founding Director of CyLab “I also think that the combination of actors was perfect, and it was the perfect time to do this.”

 

During the forum, Aaron Roth, the Henry Salvatori Professor of Computer Science and Cognitive Science at the University of Pennsylvania, was officially recognized as CyLab’s 2023 Distinguished Alumni Award winner. Roth presented his latest research and received the award from his former advisee, Steven Wu, now assistant professor in CMU’s School of Computer Science.

In addition to the forum, participants had the opportunity to tour CyLab’s Biometrics Lab, take part in demos on WiSE Lab and picoCTF, and network during the 20-Year Celebration Gala at the Heinz History Center.

CyLab partners who attended the event say the conference provides them with insight into the latest trends in cybersecurity and privacy and offers the opportunity to connect with colleagues and academics doing leading work in the field.

“One thing that I would say makes CyLab very different than a lot of the other research institutions is that most of the topics that they bring are the ones that we see successfully implemented in industry,” said Ilyas Iyoob, chief data scientist and global head of research at Kyndryl. “That gives us confidence to keep working here because we know whatever is built is going to see the light of day at the end.”

“It’s been great to not only meet the students and faculty but also meet the other partners and see that we're part of an elite group—partners who are committed to not only the growth of CMU and CyLab but also the growth of these organizations as a whole, and to bringing security to the forefront of what we do,” said Jose Romero-Mariona, associate director of engineering at Raytheon Technologies.

“As a government entity, we see certain problems that academia can overcome,” said Melissa Chua, head of capability development (Cyber AI) at the Singapore Defence Science and Technology Agency’s (DSTA’s) Cybersecurity Programme Centre. “And we see CyLab having certain interests in cybersecurity that are similar to what we are looking at. So we are partnering with CMU to understand the research work and share the outcomes with the professors more intimately to be able to derive value when we bring it back to our own internal use cases.”

“I really like the interdisciplinary nature of CyLab just as part of its existence,” said Tim Vidas, principal engineer at Amazon Web Services. “I think that that really influences the types of solutions that they seek, and their generally out-of-box thinking that doesn't lean too hard on the traditional methods and procedures.”

“To me, if you are forward-thinking and you want to see the trends in the industry from a service perspective, this is the place to be because we have students who are working on things that we don't think about on a day-to-day basis, and you get that research being done here by very smart people,” said Max Wandera, director of Eaton’s Product Cybersecurity Center of Excellence.

CyLab’s partners include a wide variety of businesses and institutions, each united by a passion for creating a world in which technology can be trusted. To learn more about partnering with the Carnegie Mellon CyLab Security and Privacy Institute, contact Michael Lisanti, Director of Partnerships, at mlisanti@andrew.cmu.edu or 412.268.1870.