Table of Contents
- CINA MSI Activities
- CINA MSI Summer Research Teams Awarded Follow-on Funding
- Focus on Virginia
- CINA Distinguished Speaker Series
The following compilation describes workforce and outreach efforts of the CINA DHS Center of Excellence at George Mason University. As you review this report, you can select these phrases noted below to review stories in each separate section.
CINA MSI Activities
Aspiring Future Workforce Leaders
In June, CINA hosted its fifth annual Minority Serving Institutions (MSI) Week program. Students and faculty from MSIs Morgan State University, St. Mary's University, Sul Ross University, Texas A&M Kingsville, the University of New Mexico, and the University of North Texas traveled to George Mason University for a full agenda of workshops, talks, tours, and networking with researchers, program directors, and DHS leadership. Highlights included a workshop focusing on network forensics of industrial control systems and a Q&A with DHS S&T Chief Scientist, Dr. Sam Howerton.
CINA also collaborated with three DHS MSI Scientific Leadership Award (SLA) recipients, recognized for applying their scientific knowledge to the Homeland Security Enterprise. Dr. Lauryn DeGreeff and Dr. Justin Carmel at Florida International University (FIU) were recognized for their work in traditional forensics; Dr. Hadi Amini, also at FIU, received an SLA to launch an academic center for machine learning; and Dr. Mais Nijim at Texas A&M University Kingsville established and expanded a multidisciplinary educational program to enhance the cyber-engineering workforce.
To learn more about CINA’s student and faculty enrichment and training partnership opportunities, contact us at cina@gmu.edu.
CINA MSI Summer Research Teams Awarded Follow-on Funding
In the summer, CINA hosted teams from DHS’s Summer Research Teams (SRT) Program for Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs). This program allows faculty and students to conduct research at a Center of Excellence:
- Exploring the relative risk severity of phishing techniques on individual phishing susceptibility (University of North Texas)
- Reconstructing criminal networks from data (University of New Mexico)
- A review on applications of Markov decision process model in combating human trafficking (Morgan State University)
- Latent fingerprint detection using nanotechnology to enhance criminal investigation in South Texas (Texas A&M University Kingsville)
Summer teams received follow-on funding to continue their research:
- The impact of COVID-19 on Transnational Criminal Organizations: Disruption, adaptation, and propaganda (Eastern New Mexico University)
- The Patricio Transnational Criminal Organization: A network analysis of forced labor trafficking (Lincoln University)
- A lightweight digital image forensic analyzer to detect AI-generated fake images through Raspberry Pi (Bowie State University)
- Using modern data science tools for investigating an English version of chat logs from the Conti ransomware group (NYC College of Technology – CUNY)
Focus on Virginia
In August, CINA joined with the Terrorism, Transnational Crime, and Corruption Center (TraCCC) at George Mason University to co-sponsor the 2023 Bring Down Counterfeiting Hackathon. In partnership with private sector and U.S. government organizations, the hackathon crowdsourced novel proposals to disrupt trade in counterfeit goods. Student participants competed for more than $20,000 in prizes while prototyping solutions to facilitate public-private data sharing and operational cooperation between the private sector and U.S. government agencies.
CINA’s $10,000 prize for follow-on research went to Mason students Salem Abdul-Bak and Krishna Purohit for their Legitima project, which bridges technology with policy. In addition to $10,000, the students received a semester of mentoring by a CINA faculty mentor and the opportunity to present their project to a wider audience.
CINA supported Virginia Commonwealth University researcher Dr. Irfan Ahmed’s project, “Digital Forensic Tools and Techniques for Investigating Control Logic Attacks in Industrial Control Systems (ICS).” His work raised the state of the art in ICS forensics and developed tools and techniques to help ICS asset owners and operators investigate cyberattacks on their systems.
CINA also supported George Mason University University researchers Dr. Robert Simon and Dr. Eric Osterweil’s project, “Time series analysis of anonymized communication channels.” They produced a toolkit that uses publicly available data logs and repositories to uncover transnational criminal organizations without the need to deanonymize their communications.
CINA Distinguished Speaker Series
The CINA Distinguished Speaker Series, which pivoted to a virtual format, highlighted experts in various fields which included:
- Calvin Chrustie: " Convergence Zone of Transnational Organized Crime Threats – Your Best Friend Canada"
- Lauren DeGreef: "Emerging Threats – Characterization and Detection of Homemade Explosives and Synthetic Opioids by Instrument and Canines
- Rochelle Keyhan: "Stop Slavery Hero gave a talk on Current Issues in Human Trafficking"
- Nic MicKinley: “Using Transaction Data to Disrupt Illicit Commodity Markets”
- Nick Nikiforakis: "Bridgespotting: How Web3 Attackers Target Web2 Cryptocurrency Users"
- Joe Weiss: “Control System Cyber Security is More than Network Cyber Security”
Review the other sections of this report below