Lawfare: “Fighting Insider Abuse After Van Buren” by Bryan Cunningham

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Van Buren v. United States on June 3 requires lawyers and policymakers to revisit the roles that law, policy and technology play in deterring, detecting, preventing and punishing misuse of sensitive data. Free societies must find ways to effectively harness increasingly large datasets and advanced powers to analyze and use such data to enhance people’s security and improve their lives while protecting individual privacy, intellectual property and other key interests.

Read the full article at Lawfare.

Irvine Standard: “UCI’s cybersecurity club makes history”

In just its third year of competing, UCI’s cybersecurity club placed fifth in the nation at the National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition finals last month. It was Irvine’s first trip to the finals after beating perennial favorite Stanford in the Western Regionals.

Read the full article at Irvine Standard.

Maestro: A New Platform for Building Reliable and Robust AI Systems

In April 2020, the National Science Foundation (NSF) issued a Dear Colleagues Letter, announcing its intention to “fund a small number of Early Concept Grants for Exploratory Research (EAGER) to encourage advances in cybersecurity education.” After reading about this opportunity for cybersecurity proposals, Assistant Professor Zhou (Joe) Li in UCI’s Henry Samueli School of Engineering contacted two colleagues in the Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences (ICS) — Computer Science Professors Sameer Singh and Sergio Gago-Masagué. The trio put together a proposal, “Multi-Level Attack and Defense Simulation Environment for Artificial Intelligence Education and Research,” and last August, they were awarded $300,000 to develop and test their proposed simulation environment.

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A bold decision to study abroad in high school led Sirui Hu to UCI and beyond (Data Science major)

Sirui Hu

For her junior year of high school, Sirui Hu decided to take a step outside her comfort zone – a big one. The Shenzhen, China teen went abroad her junior and senior year and landed in Orange County. And when her high school offered a joint summer program that brought her to UCI to explore campus and meet new students, she fell in love with the campus and its inclusive culture.

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KABC: “Biden weighs direct action against Russian targets following cyberattacks” (Bryan Cunningham quoted)

Cybersecurity experts agree that Biden will have to move past stern warnings and sanctions to use U.S. cyber capabilities to either directly disrupt foreign cybercriminal networks or hit a Russian target. “The president needs to say, if something happens like this again from within the territory of Russia, we will take appropriate response action directly inside Russia,” said Bryan Cunningham, executive director of the University of California, Irvine Cybersecurity Policy & Research Institute.

Read the full article on the KABC website.

Professor Mohsen Imani Awarded Two Grants to Study Brain-Inspired Hyperdimensional Computing

A report from IoT Analytics predicts that by 2025, there will be more than 30 billion Internet of Things (IoT) connections worldwide, up from 11.7 billion in 2020. Similarly, the market for wearable devices continues to grow, as noted in a forecast from Gartner: “The rise in remote work and increased interest in health monitoring during the COVID-19 pandemic was a significant factor driving market growth.” With this explosion in the number of IoT connections, and the growing demand for resource-constrained devices that can support everything from work-related activities to health monitoring, comes the need for increased efficiency, reliability and security. This is where the research of Assistant Professor of Computer Science Mohsen Imani comes into play.

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New Security Threat for Self-Driving Cars: Invisible Road Obstacles

On May 14, 2021, a self-driving taxi stopped dead in its tracks when it became confused by traffic cones on the road. In a statement, the company noted that “while the situation was not ideal, the [autonomous] Waymo Driver operated the vehicle safely until roadside assistance arrived.” But what if instead of stopping because of a cone, an autonomous vehicle drove through one? What if the “cone” had been designed to avoid detection?

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11 ICS Professors Included on Guide2Research’s 2021 Ranking of Top Scientists in Computer Science

Guide2Research, a leading portal for computer science research and data on scientific contributions, recently released its 7th edition of Top Scientists Ranking for Computer Science & Electronics that featured more than 30 scholars from UCI, with Computer Science Professors Pierre Baldi, Ramesh Jain and Gene Tsudik at the top of the list. Here are the 11 computer science and informatics professors who made it onto Guide2Research’s 2021 rankings:

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