Category: Uncategorized (Page 1 of 4)

American Self-Defense in Cyberspace

Speaker:  ACM Distinguished Speaker Dr. Josiah Dykstra, Cybersecurity Executive Leader @ BBN, RTX

Time: Mar. 12th, 2026, Thursday, 11pm to 12:30pm

Location: UMBC ITE 325b or https://umbc.webex.com/meet/wtan1
Lunch provided!

Abstract

The United States is a major consumer, contributor, and target in cyberspace. This talk will describe cyber threats, roles and responsibilities, technology, and policy considerations for achieving American self-defense in cyber. We will discuss options for defending against cyberattack, achieving deterrence, and the interplay between offense and defense. We will consider various perspectives from computer science and engineering, political science, and economics.

Bio

Dr. Josiah Dykstra is the Director of Strategic Initiatives at Trail of Bits. He solves ambitious problems by blending high-end security research with a real-world attacker mentality to fortify the code powering the world’s most critical organizations and devices.

Dr. Dykstra previously worked for 19 years at the National Security Agency (NSA) where he advised leadership and employees on technical matters for integrated cybersecurity operations and provided technical direction on projects and programs that enabled high impact operational effects. He held a variety of technical and leadership positions including as a senior researcher within NSA’s Research Directorate studying computer network operations. His work has also included penetration testing, digital forensics, and malware analysis.

Dykstra is a Lifetime and Distinguished Member of ACM. He attended the 2nd Heidelberg Laureate Forum as a Young Researcher in 2014, which motivated his commitment to ACM. He is passionate about developing and empowering the next generation of interdisciplinary computing professionals, particularly in cybersecurity. Dykstra remains an active collaborator with academic, industry, and government researchers around the country. He has received numerous noteworthy awards, including the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). He is one of eight people in the CyberCorps Scholarship for Service (SFS) Hall of Fame.

Josiah received a B.S. in computer science and B.A. in music from Hope College (Holland, MI), M.S in information assurance from Iowa State University, and Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. His doctoral research explored new technical and legal mechanisms to support digital forensics for cloud computing environments. Dr. Dykstra is a Fellow of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences (AAFS), member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and member of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES).

Dr. Dykstra is the author of the book Essential Cybersecurity Science (2016), a guide for practitioners and discusses key considerations for conducting scientific experiments in cybersecurity, including domain-specific insights including digital forensics and malware analysis. He is also co-author of the book Cybersecurity Myths and Misconceptions (2023). An experienced presenter and lecturer, he has spoken at major security events including Black Hat USA and RSA Conference.

Host: DaYuan Tan, Weikan Tan, Rui Jin

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in Manufacturing: An Overview

Speaker: ACM Distinguished Speaker Prof. Ram SriramChief, Software & Systems Division, NIST

Time: Feb. 6th 2026, Friday, 12pm to 1:30pm

Location: In Person: ITE 325b    
Lunch provided!

Abstract

Artificial Intelligence (AI) focuses on developing computer programs that emulate human intelligence and problem-solving strategies. Since its inception in the 1950s, AI has evolved through multiple waves—from knowledge-based expert systems, to neural networks and machine learning, and now toward a third wave that integrates learning with knowledge structures.

In this talk, Prof. Sriram will provide an overview of major AI methods and discuss their applications in the manufacturing domain, including expert systems, neural networks, and other machine learning techniques.

Bio:

Prof. Ram D. Sriram is the Chief of the Software & Systems Division at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)’s Information Technology Laboratory (ITL). He previously served on the engineering faculty at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he founded the Intelligent Engineering Systems Laboratory and initiated the pioneering MIT-DICE project in collaborative engineering.

Prof. Sriram has authored or co-authored nearly 300 publications, including several books on Artificial Intelligence, and his work has received numerous best paper and most-cited paper awards. His honors include the NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award, the ASME Design Automation Award, multiple Lifetime Achievement Awards, and the IEEE Reliability Society Lifetime Achievement Award (2023).

He is a Fellow of ACM, IEEE (Life), AAAS, ASME, AIMBE, and several other professional societies, and currently serves as President-Elect of the Washington Academy of Sciences. Prof. Sriram has also held numerous national leadership roles, including chairing the IEEE Computer Society Fellow Evaluating Committee and serving on federal advisory and steering committees related to AI, software systems, and manufacturing.

Host: DaYuan Tan, James Baker, Weikan Tan, Rui Jin

Host: DaYuan Tan, James Baker, Weikan Tan, Shuai Xu

Are you passionate about technology, eager to make a difference in our academic community, and ready to take on a leadership role?

The UMBC ACM Student Chapter is now accepting applications for its next executive team! We are currently seeking motivated individuals to fill the following positions:
• President
• Vice President
• Secretary
• Treasurer

Eligibility:
To apply, you must be an active ACM member (student memberships start at just $19/year). We welcome all students who are enthusiastic about computer science, emerging technologies, and building a vibrant academic community.

Why Join?
• A great opportunity to work closely with faculty and leading researchers
• Gain leadership and organizational experience
• Shape the direction of our chapter’s events, talks, and outreach
• Be part of a team that supports innovation, learning, and collaboration

What We’re Looking For:
• Willingness to organize and participate in ACM events
• Strong sense of initiative and collaboration
• Previous experience in event planning or student leadership (preferred but not required)
• A desire to contribute to the growth of the ACM community at UMBC

To ensure a smooth transition, current officers will support and co-organize 1–2 events with the incoming team, passing on our experiences and best practices.

How to Apply:
Fill out the https://forms.gle/Z727wyYappKQH2GR9. 

There is no fixed deadline — the application form will remain open until all positions are filled.
However, applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis, and earlier submissions will be given priority.

We encourage all interested students to apply—this is a great opportunity to lead, grow, and make a meaningful impact.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact us via email: acm@umbc.edu.

Best regards,
DaYuan Tan
President, UMBC ACM Student Chapter
acm@umbc.edu, dayuan1@umbc.edu

Thanks to our special invited speaker Prof. Manas Gaur, and all participants. We successfully hosted the ACM Talk on 2/20/2023.

Title: Targeted Knowledge Infusion To Make Conversational AI Explainable and Safe

Speaker: Prof. Manas Gaur, UMBC

Slides: Please check out the slides here:

Flyer

Event Pictures

Host: DaYuan Tan, Siddhant Gupta, Venkata Sridhar Perepu

Thanks to our special invited speaker Dr. Xuezhi Cang, our advisor Prof. Finin and all participants.

Host: DaYuan Tan, Siddhant Gupta, Venkata Sridhar Perepu

You are invited to ACM Talk & Hi-Tea! Join us to learn more and connect with faculty, staff, students and treat yourself to coffee, tea and snacks! 

Location: In Person: ITE 325b (the speaker will present in person); Virtual: https://umbc.webex.com/meet/dayuan1
Time: Dec. 7th 2022, Wednesday, 11:15am to 12:50pm

ACM Talk: Modeling and Assessing Association by Comparing Spatial Heterogeneity
Speaker: Dr. Xuezhi Cang, UMBC. 
Abstract:Measuring spatial association between different spatial layers is important in spatial data modeling. Traditionally, the relationship between variables can be measured by linear regression. The assumptions of those traditional methods are hard to meet in the spatial data. Also, the traditional statistical methods do not consider Tobler’s First Law of Geography which is an important spatial data property. To address these drawbacks, I propose a spatial data association estimator (termed as SPatial Association DEtector, SPADE). By comparing the spatial heterogeneity, this estimator, which evolved from a variance-based relation estimator, explicitly considers the spatial variance by assigning the weight of the influence based on spatial distribution. It also overcomes the drawback of its old version which can only measure the association between continuous and discrete variables. This method has been applied to estimate the influence of the environmental factors and their outcome (e.g. junction angle and environmental factors). The associations between environmental factors and junction angles have been used to infer the paleoenvironment of Mars; they showed that Mars was probably “warm” and “wet” several billion years ago. The method could also be used in human geography and social science to estimate the importance of spatial factors and their outcome. 

Please also check out our attached flyer.
Sincerely,

Dayuan

————
Dayuan Tan
President, Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) UMBC Chapter
dayuan1@umbc.edu, https://dayuantan.github.io/AboutMe/  

/*
ACM UMBC Contact:
•Website https://acm.umbc.edu   
•Email acm@umbc.edu, dayuan1@umbc.edu•LinkedIn Page https://www.linkedin.com/company/acm-umbc-chapter/ 
•Discord https://discord.gg/yPxpJUFF 
•Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/UMBC.ACM.Chapter/ 
•Twitter UMBC ACM Chapter, @UMBC_ACM*/

Host: DaYuan Tan, Siddhant Gupta, Venkata Sridhar Perepu

Thank our special invited speaker Guohou(Jack) Shan from Temple University and all participants who joined in person or virtually!

Host: DaYuan Tan, Siddhant Gupta, Venkata Sridhar Perepu

You are invited to ACM Talk & Hi-Tea! Join us to learn more and connect with faculty, staff, students and treat yourself to coffee, tea and snacks! 

Location: In Person: ITE 346; Virtual: https://umbc.webex.com/meet/dayuan1
Time: Nov. 22 2022, Tuesday, 11am to 12:50pm

ACM Talk: How Does Fact-checking Affect News Engagement on Social Media Platforms: A Multi-method Study

Speaker: Guohou(Jack) Shan, PhD Candidate at Temple University. UMBC Alumni’2019. 

Abstract: Social media platforms have begun to counter false news by integrating fact-checking services. These fact checkers verify posts’ content and inform users about the posts’ veracity before engaging with them. While the efficacy of fact-checking on users has been studied in prior literature, little attention has been paid to the factors that determine the effectiveness of fact-checking (e.g., fact-checking timeliness or reputation of the poster) to sway user reactions. Our multi-method study leverages the high external validity of observational data from Twitter (Study 1) complemented by the high internal validity of experimental data (Study 2) to build insights into how fact-checking methods and poster attributes affect news engagement (i.e., willingness to read, talk, comment, and share). We find when fact-checking flags news as false significantly decreases news engagement and that fact-checking timeliness and poster reputation moderate the effect of fact-checking. Moreover, we find that fact-checking affects news engagement by influencing users’ evaluation of the news believability and shareability. Our findings enrich the understanding of the impact of fact-checking on users’ engagement with news and suggest managerial implications for reducing false news engagement.   

Host: DaYuan Tan, Siddhant Gupta, Venkata Sridhar Perepu

Host: DaYuan Tan, Siddhant Gupta, Venkata Sridhar Perepu