KU Students Recognized for Research at Third Annual Cybersecurity Conference in April

Members of the University of Kansas and the public recently attended a cybersecurity conference that once again brought together experts in the field and research. The Third Annual FBI & KU Cybersecurity Conference: Bridging the Knowledge of Government, Industry, Workforce and Research took place on April 3 and 4 at the Kansas Union on KU’s Lawrence campus.

Chancellor Douglas A. Girod said that as cybersecurity continues to pose a serious threat to the economy and national security, KU can help address this challenge.

“The University of Kansas is educating the next generation of cybersecurity leaders and continuing our cutting-edge research and tech development in cybersecurity-related fields,” Girod said. “KU has the talent and infrastructure to be a national leader in this space, and this conference is a great way to help us fulfill that role.”

Conference highlights included: 

• Presenters from Major League Baseball, the Romanian intelligence Service, U.S. Naval Information Forces and KU School of Engineering faculty member and Google Earth creator Brian McClendon
• Remarks from university and FBI leaders
• Top KU researchers discussing the latest research on cybersecurity, including such topics as resiliency, trust and disinformation
• Panel of industry and government stakeholders on best practices and potential threats/attacks
• Breakout sessions on topics like snake malware and ransomware hostage negotiation

As in past conferences, a highlight of the event were student-led research presentations, which took place on April 3. Students across multiple disciplines presented their ongoing work in the form of posters summarizing their work that were judged by conference attendees. Three students took away top honors for their presentations:

• Jace Keagy took top honors for his work on Voice-to-Voice Deepfake Audio Detection. Keagy’s research is co-authored by fellow students and VICEROY scholars Kemar Wilson, Ali Abdulaziz and Farrell Joswara. The work is sponsored by Dr. Bo Luo and Dr. Fengjun Li with leadership support from graduate teaching assistants Yuying Li and Zeyan Liu.
• Md Mashfiq Rizvee was awarded second place for his work on Dynamic Hierarchical Bloom Filters for Human Surveillance. Rizvee’s research is co-authored by fellow student Devin Setiawan and their work is supervised by Dr.  Sumaiya Shomaji.
• Henry Marshall received third place for his work on Enhancing Cybersecurity through AI-Generated Content Detection: A Multiview-Multitask Learning Approach for Media Authentication and AI-Detection. Marshall’s research is co-authored by fellow students Seth Daniels and Audrey Pan and supervised by Dr. Bo Luo and Dr. Fengjun Li.

All students who presented research posters at the conference were encouraged to participate by their faculty mentors and were incentivized to do so for myriad reasons, from networking with industry professionals to articulating their work in front of a captive audience to advancing their work’s potential to be published in a peer-reviewed journal.

“While we continue to evolve with the rapid development of information technologies, a reminder that our core mission is and will always be to nurture our research community,” said Perry Alexander, AT&T Foundation Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Science and Director of KU’s Institute for Information Sciences. “Our primary goals remain supporting our Principal Investigators in groundbreaking research, positioning our students for success, and serving our state, region and nation.”