Tuesday, February 22, 2022

Trusted CI Announces The 2022 Fellows

Trusted CI, the NSF Cybersecurity Center of Excellence, is excited to announce the Trusted CI Open Science Cybersecurity Fellows. Eight individuals with professional interests in cybersecurity have been selected from a nationally competitive pool.  During the year of their Fellowship, they will receive recognition and cybersecurity professional development including training and travel funding to cybersecurity-related events.

The 2022 Trusted CI Open Science Cybersecurity Fellows are:

Brian Roland
Data Management Specialist at Northwestern University 

Brian Roland provides Data Management support and consultation for researchers at Northwestern University. He supports researchers across a broad spectrum of research disciplines with data workflow design and leveraging the appropriate data storage and data transfer solutions to meet their research goals and both federal and institutional compliance needs. In addition to providing data workflow support, Brian enjoys working with his colleagues on building out institutional lines of service that help optimize the data flows involved with researchers' analysis and data management plans.

Charles McElroy
Assistant Professor at Cleveland State University 

Professor Charles McElroy earned his PhD from Case Western Reserve University, (Cleveland, OH) in Information Systems in 2017. There he studied how diverse scientific teams used sophisticated cyberinfrastructure to formulate complex arguments. Upon graduation, Professor McElroy won a national competition sponsored by the Office of the Director for National Intelligence to conduct research in data science at the Center for Data-Driven Discovery (CD3) at the California Institute of Technology (Pasadena, CA). At the conclusion of his IC PostDoc experience, Professor McElroy won a Fulbright Fellowship to Oxford University (2019), where he focused on issues related to Cyber-Security. Professor McElroy is currently a new Assistant Professor in Information Systems at Cleveland State University. His interests include data science, AI, machine learning, and how these tools can be applied to cybersecurity issues.



Garhan Attebury

Lead System Administrator at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln 

Garhan Attebury is the lead system administrator within the Holland Computing Center at the University of Nebraska. His efforts and interests cover a wide spectrum of research computing areas from local HPC needs to global computing with involvement in the WLCG and other distributed platforms. He additionally acts as the networking and security liaison for HCC and has a strong interest in architecting solutions that balance enabling research with meeting security and privacy needs.

Hannah Hiles
Research Project Manager and Product Owner at RENCI 

Hannah Hiles is a research project manager and product owner at the Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI). She received her MS in Library and Information Science from UNC Greensboro; her studies focused on academic and digital libraries and served as a touchstone for instilling curiosity about the intersection of people and information. Her research is centered around UI/UX development, mindful community engagement, and iterative design of best practices to support researchers and their research communities in accomplishing shared goals.

Joseph White-Swift
Systems Engineer for HPC/CI in the Office of Information Technology at The University of Texas at Dallas 

Joey is a systems engineer at the University of Texas at Dallas focusing on CI and Networking. Wearing his CI hat, he primarily serves economists from around the Federal Reserve Bank System in a partnership to admin and supports their Big-Tex Cluster. Wearing his networking hat, he provides networking support and services for the university CI infrastructure and the university science DMZ, which includes both the Texas Research and education CyberInfrastructure Services (TRECIS) and the Global Environment network Innovations (GENI) projects. Wearing his researcher hat, he works with, supports, and conducts research as a member of the Open Networking Advanced Research (OpNeAR) Lab and has also served as a reviewer for the INDIS Workshop since 2020. Joey has been a member of the IEEE since 2016 and is an Eagle Scout.

Melissa Cragin
Chief Strategist for Data Initiatives in the Research data Services at SDSC/UCSD 

Melissa Cragin is Chief Strategist for Data Initiatives in the Research Data Services division at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), at the University of California San Diego (UCSD).Prior to joining SDSC, Melissa was the Executive Director of the Midwest Big Data Hub, based at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). Previously, Melissa served for several years in the Office of the Assistant Director, Directorate of Biological Sciences at the National Science Foundation (NSF), where she guided the development of data policy and accelerated community engagement on research data management and public access. At SDSC, Melissa works on projects to improve data access and use, and foster the development of the national data infrastructure ecosystem and related policy. Melissa has a PhD in information science from the iSchool at Illinois (UIUC), and a MLIS degree from Rutgers University.

Stephen Streng
Research Development Strategist with the Strategic Projects and Research Collaborative (SPARC) at the University of Minnesota 

Stephen Streng is a Research Development Strategist with the Strategic Projects and Research Collaborative (SPARC) at the University of Minnesota (UMN). In this role, he helps interdisciplinary and multi-institutional teams and the UMN system achieve significant impact by providing competitive intelligence, strategic planning, proposal development, and project design consultation. Stephen has been involved in cybersecurity since 2015 when in a previous role at the UMN Food Protection and Defense Institute (FPDI), he initiated FPDI’s cybersecurity research program by organizing and facilitating the first Food Industry Cybersecurity Summit. In 2019, FPDI published his white paper, Adulterating More Than Food: The Cyber Risk to Food Processing and ManufacturingMore Than Food: The Cyber Risk to Food Processing and Manufacturing, which examined the cyber risks to industrial control systems in food processing and manufacturing industries. Stephen is a former Department of Homeland Security Analytic Exchange Program (AEP) participant as a member of the Protecting Sensitive Data and Intellectual Property topic team, and he currently serves on the UMN Highly Restricted Data Steering Committee. Stephen continues to consult for FPDI and has an ongoing interest in operational technology cybersecurity.   participant as a member of the Protecting Sensitive Data and Intellectual Property topic team, and he currently serves on the UMN Highly Restricted DataSteering Committee. Stephen continues to consult for FPDI and has an ongoing interest in operational technology cybersecurity.

Unal Tatar
Assistant Professor at SUNY at Albany 

Dr. Unal Tatar is an assistant professor at the College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security, and Cybersecurity at the University at Albany. Dr. Tatar served as the head of the National Computer Emergency Response Team of Turkey and as an academic advisor at the NATO Center of Excellence Defense Against Terrorism. Dr. Tatar has three main lines of research: the economics of cybersecurity and risk management, critical infrastructure protection and national security, and cybersecurity capacity building and workforce development. Dr. Tatar’s research has been funded by NSF, DOD, NSA, ONR, AFRL, NATO, and several foundations. Dr. Tatar holds a BS in Computer Science, an MS in Cryptography, and a Ph.D. in Engineering Management and Systems Engineering.

The Fellows will receive training consisting of a Virtual Institute, providing 20 hours of basic cybersecurity training over six months. The training will be delivered by Trusted CI staff and invited speakers. The Virtual Institute will be presented as a weekly series via Zoom and recorded to be publicly available for later online viewing. Travel support is budgeted (during their first year only) to cover fellows’ attendance at the NSF Cybersecurity Summit, PEARC, and one professional development opportunity agreed to with Trusted CI. The Fellows will be added to an email list to discuss any challenges they encounter that will receive prioritized attention from Trusted CI staff. Trusted CI will recognize the Fellows on its website and social media. Fellowships are funded for one year, after which the Trusted CI Fellows will be encouraged to continue participating in Trusted CI activities in the years following their fellowship year. After their training in the Virtual Institute, Fellows, with assistance from the Trusted CI team, are expected to help their science community with cybersecurity and make them aware of Trusted CI for complex needs. By the end of the year, they will be expected to present or write a short white paper on the cybersecurity needs of their community and some initial steps they will take (or have taken) to address these needs. After the Fellowship year Trusted CI will continue to recognize the cohort of Fellows and give them prioritized attention. Over the years, this growing cohort of Fellows will broaden and diversify Trusted CI’s impact.

About the Trusted CI Fellows Program

Trusted CI serves the scientific community as the NSF Cybersecurity Center of Excellence, providing leadership in and assistance in cybersecurity in the support of research. In 2019, Trusted CI establish an Open Science Cybersecurity Fellows program. This program establishes and support a network of Fellows with diversity in both geography and scientific discipline. These fellows will have access to training and other resources to foster their professional development in cybersecurity. In exchange, they will champion cybersecurity for science in their scientific and geographic communities and communicate challenges and successful practices to Trusted CI.

Fellows come from a variety of career stages. They demonstrate a passion for their area, the ability to communicate ideas effectively, and a real interest in the role of cybersecurity in research. Fellows are empowered to talk about cybersecurity to a wider audience, network with others who share a passion for cybersecurity for open science and learn key skills that benefit them and their collaborators.