Mr. Rob Joyce is the Director of the National Security Agency’s (NSA) Cybersecurity Directorate, which is charged with preventing and eradicating threats to U.S. National Security Systems and critical infrastructure, with a focus on the Defense Industrial Base.

Prior to this role, Mr. Joyce was the Special US Liaison Officer, London. As the senior NSA cryptologic representative in the United Kingdom, he served as the key interlocutor between NSA and GCHQ.

Mr. Joyce has held a wealth of technical and leadership positions across NSA and the broader government, to include serving as Special Assistant to the President and Cybersecurity Coordinator at the White House, Acting Homeland Security Advisor at the White House, and Chief of NSA’s Tailored Access Operations.

Mr. Joyce began his career as an engineer and is a technologist at heart. He received his Bachelor’s Degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Clarkson University and earned a Master’s Degree in Electrical Engineering from the John Hopkins University.

Wen Masters is vice president for cyber technologies. In this role, she drives MITRE’s corporate cybersecurity strategy. She oversees MITRE’s innovation centers in cybersecurity, leading a team of more than 600 professionals solving the country’s toughest cyber challenges. Together, we are working to secure the nation’s critical cyber infrastructure and protect American intellectual property from cyber theft by foreign adversaries.

Masters partners with MITRE’s federally funded research and development centers (FFRDCs), including the National Cybersecurity FFRDC, extending our impact through industry using platforms such as the MITRE ATT&CK® framework and threat intelligence–sharing standards such as STIX™ and TAXII™. She also collaborates with the MITRE Accelerator and MITRE Engenuity, a foundation for public good, to drive success of industry-facing cyber initiatives, such as the Center for Threat Informed Defense.

Before joining MITRE in 2021, Masters was deputy director of research at Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI), and co-lead of the Commission on Research Next, developing a roadmap and comprehensive strategy for Georgia Tech’s research enterprise. She served as director of the Information and Cyber Sciences Directorate at GTRI, and as a principal research scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology, also known as Georgia Tech.

Masters spent more than a decade in the Senior Executive Service at the Office of Naval Research. There, she led the Navy’s Integrated Science and Technology portfolio in Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance. The Navy awarded Masters its Distinguished Civilian Service Medal, Superior Civilian Service Medal, and Meritorious Civilian Service Medal. She also served on the Army Science Board and the National Academy of Sciences Naval Studies Board.

Prior to her civilian government service, Masters worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, where she was responsible for orbit determination for NASA’s deep space exploration missions, including Magellan, Galileo, and Cassini.

Master’s was a member of the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics, where she served as vice chair for the SIAM Imaging Science Activity Group and the Association for Women in Mathematics. She has published several articles in technical journals and conference proceedings, and edited a book, Mathematical Modeling in Optical Science.

Masters holds bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in mathematics from the University of California, Irvine.

Amit Yoran is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Tenable, overseeing the company’s strategic vision and direction. As the threat landscape expands, Amit is leading Tenable into a new era of security solutions, empowering organizations to meet the challenges of evolving threats with innovative technologies and a vision of transformative vulnerability management.

Prior to joining Tenable, Amit was President of RSA, one of the most successful security companies in the world, where he led their growth and strategy since 2014. Amit came to RSA through the acquisition of his high-growth company, NetWitness, where he was founder and CEO for the market-leading network forensic product provider. Previously, he served as Founding Director of the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) program in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Amit also founded Riptech in Virginia, one of the first managed security service providers (MSSP) and which was acquired by Symantec in 2002. Amit currently serves as a board member and adviser to several security startups.

Amit is an esteemed influencer and leader in the security industry. He is often sought out as a keynote speaker or media spokesperson. His unique blend of public service and private enterprise experience informs his insights, thought leadership, and engaging presentations.

DR.Peter Bermel is an associate professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University. His research focuses on improving the performance of photovoltaic, thermophotovoltaic, and nonlinear systems using the principles of nanophotonics. Key enabling techniques for his work include electromagnetic and electronic theory, modeling, simulation, fabrication, and characterization.

My research interest lies in the area of Computer Security. My primary focus is in the field of security of mobile devices. In particular, I am interested in identifying novel security issues in these devices and applying both static and dynamic analysis techniques to detect vulnerable and malicious mobile apps automatically. I am also interested in developing new methods to analyze compiled binary code. More recently, I started exploring the security issues posed by IoT devices and their interaction with mobile applications. As a core member of the Shellphish and OOO teams, I played and organized many security competitions (CTFs), and I won the third place at the DARPA Cyber Grand Challenge.

My research investigates the design and evaluation of security for software and systems, specifically on emerging computing platforms and the complex environments in which they operate. Through systems design and program analysis, my research seeks to improve security and privacy guarantees in commodity computer systems. My research approach is best illustrated by my extensive work in safety, security and privacy of IoT systems.

Edwin D. (Dan) Hirleman Jr. currently serves as Purdue’s inaugural Executive Director for International Advancement. The position fortifies linkages between the Purdue Research Foundation (PRF), where the Advancement arm of Purdue resides, and academic and faculty activities. Hirleman rejoined Purdue in 2014 as its inaugural Chief Corporate and Global Partnerships Officer with responsibility for building comprehensive strategic partnerships with the private sector and international entities. He also served as Purdue’s Senior Intellectual Property Officer and Senior International Officer. Ongoing strategic partnership successes during his tenure include Rolls-Royce in research and cybersecurity, Eli Lilly and Co., the Purdue-Ford Alliance, Infosys, and Cummins. In that time Purdue repeatedly set annual records including: total private-sector funding ($145.7M); for- profit awards ($74.3M); study abroad (2,409 students); US patents (123); and licenses (147).

Hirleman studied mechanical engineering at Purdue University and received a BSME, graduating in 3 years with a 4.0 GPA, followed by a MSME and a Ph.D. He received Howard Hughes Doctoral and NSF Graduate Fellowships, did six industry internships, and was a visiting researcher at the Technical University of Denmark. He joined Arizona State University as faculty where he received teaching and research awards and held multiple administrative positions culminating in associate dean for research.

He then served as William E. and Florence E. Perry Head of Purdue ME, leading that School as it grew to over 500 grad / 1300 undergrad students, developed BS/MS, BS/MBA and direct-to-Ph.D. programs, tripled sponsored research, and completed a $142M Capital Campaign providing for scholarships/fellowships, endowed professorships, and two new ME buildings. He has received: the INEER Int’l Achievement Award in 2006; the Hon. George Brown Award for Int’l Scientific Cooperation in 2008; and the 2009 Charles Russ Richards Memorial Award. He is an ASME Fellow and chaired the Advisory Board of Engineers for a Sustainable World. He also served for four years as the second dean of the School of Engineering at the University of California, Merced.

Hirleman has about 200 publications, 6 U.S. patents, and presented 80 invited lectures in 14 countries. Recent research involves laser-based sensors for identification of cells in bio-hazards, food safety, high- throughput screening, and stem cell diagnostics. His contributions in flow diagnostics, semiconductor manufacturing, and global engineering and cyber education are also recognized. Ten technologies developed in his lab have been licensed and/or are in commercial products. Support involved more than 70 grants and contracts from 31 companies and 11 government agencies (totaling over $22M).

He is married to Laura Kennedy Hirleman, M.C., who counsels in private practice. They have 3 children and 2 grandchildren. Hirleman was founding President of Kairos Ministries, which provides worship services, counseling, and tutoring in Phoenix area jails. Racquetball serves as stress relief, and he has won numerous university open (ASU, Purdue) and state age-division championships (AZ, CA, and IN), as well as medaling twice in his division at the National Championships.

Simon is Executive Vice President of Cyber Product Innovation at MasterCard. He has been a leader in the cybersecurity space for more than 20 years, widely recognized as an industry speaker and seasoned entrepreneur. He previously served in executive technology roles at McAfee, Intel, and most recently as the chief technology officer at the data protection firm Winmagic.

Dr. Tahir M. Khan is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer and Information Technology at the Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. Prior to joining Purdue University, he worked as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Information Systems and Technology at Utah Valley University. He has taught a wide range of courses including cybersecurity, system administration, digital forensics, and information technology courses at Utah Valley University and Gallaudet University. He also worked with Gallaudet University, where he had privileged of learning and teaching in American Sign Language (ASL). 

I am interested in all aspects of System security and Program analysis. In particular, I work on applying static/dynamic program analysis and fuzzing to solve various system security problems. I am also interested in Binary analysis and exploring Machine Learning techniques to solve various problems with binary analysis.

My research resulted in various Open-source security tools and several Common Vulnerability Exposures (CVEs) in critical system software such as kernel drivers and bootloaders.

When time permits, I enjoy participating in Computer Security Capture the Flag (CTF) competitions with Shellphish, and I won third place with the Shellphish CGC team in the autonomous DARPA Cyber Grand Challenge.

Theresa S. Mayer is Purdue University’s executive vice president for research and partnerships and a professor of electrical and computer engineering. She oversees Purdue’s $660 million research enterprise, including Discovery Park, an interdisciplinary complex for grand-challenge research and is responsible for Purdue’s international programs and its global and corporate partnerships endeavors.

Before joining Purdue University, Mayer served as vice president for research and innovation and a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Virginia Tech. Prior to her role at Virginia Tech, Mayer was at Pennsylvania State University for more than 20 years, where she served as a distinguished professor of electrical engineering, associate dean for research and innovation in the College of Engineering, the site director of the National Science Foundation’s National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network and director of the Materials Research Institute Nanofabrication Laboratory.

She is internationally recognized for her research in applications of nanotechnology to electronic and photonic devices with new and previously unexplored functions. Her work in directed and self-assembly of nanoparticles has been used to expand the types and complexity of materials that can be integrated into devices beyond standard lithographic approaches, enabling a wide range of novel structures from low-power integrated nanosensor circuits to nanostructured gradient index optical components.

She has more than 350 technical publications, invited presentations and tutorials, and holds eight patents. Several of her co-inventions have been transitioned into commercial products. She is a fellow of the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and has received numerous awards for her teaching and research, including the NSF CAREER award. Throughout her career, she has supported the advancement of women in science and engineering.

Mayer earned her bachelor’s degree from Virginia Tech, and a master’s degree and Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Purdue.

Dr. Ida Ngambeki is an Assistant Professor of Computer and Information Technology at Purdue University. She is the Academic Director of the Purdue Cybersecurity Education Training Network and Resources and Director of the Cybersecure Behavior Lab. Dr. Ngambeki graduated from Smith College with a B.S. in Engineering and from Purdue University with a PhD in Engineering Education. Dr. Ngambeki’s key areas of research interest include: cybersecure behavior, social engineering, cybersecurity education, cybersecurity policy, and cybersecurity workforce development. Dr. Ngambeki’s current research projects include: development of curriculum guidance documents and a hub and spoke infrastructure for Industrial Control Systems Security, developing a self-directed learning platform for secure programming, developing a cybersecurity apprenticeship program, and developing an AI based humor integrated social engineering training tool. Dr. Ngambeki has developed courses in Social Engineering, Cyber Law and Cyber Ethics.

Anand directs the Integrated Systems Laboratory in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue. His group’s research spans various topics in VLSI and Computer Engineering, including System-on-chip design, domain-specific architecture, computing with nanoscale post-CMOS devices, and heterogeneous parallel computing. He is currently Chair of the VLSI area in the School of ECE. Before joining Purdue, Anand was a Senior Researcher at NEC Laboratories America and held a visiting position at the Department of Electrical Engineering, Princeton University.

Shreyas Sundaram is an Associate Professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University. He received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2009, and was a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Pennsylvania from 2009 to 2010. He was an Assistant Professor at the University of Waterloo from 2010 to 2014. His research interests include network science, large-scale dynamical systems, fault-tolerant and secure control, game theory, linear system and estimation theory, and the application of algebraic graph theory to system analysis.

In 2016, he received an Air Force Research Lab Summer Faculty Fellowship, and the Ruth and Joel Spira Outstanding Teacher Award at Purdue. At Waterloo, he received the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Research Award in 2014, the University of Waterloo Outstanding Performance Award in 2013 and the Faculty of Engineering Distinguished Performance Award in 2012. He was a finalist for the Best Student Paper Award at the 2007 and 2008 American Control Conferences.

My research involves embedded systems, operating systems, and trusted computing. I have got my Ph.D. degree from the Department of Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE) at the University of Florida in 2019 advised by Dr. Kevin Butler. I was a founding member and the lead graduate student of the Florida Institute for Cybersecurity (FICS). I have also spent a year working on Machine Learning research in the Department of Computer & Information Science (CIS) at the University of Oregon and around four years as a software engineer in Nokia R&D in China (former Lucent Technologies). I have got my BS degree from the Qingdao University of Technology and ME degree from the Ocean University of China.

My current research focuses on securing the software development life-cycle. Before that, my research focused on secure password storage mechanisms and update systems. Because of this, I’m the team lead of in-toto, a framework to secure the software development life-cycle, as well as PolyPasswordHasher, a password storage mechanism that’s incredibly resilient to offline password cracking. Also, I’m a contributor for The Update Framework (TUF), which is the software update system being integrated on a variety of projects like Docker, CPAN, and others.

Dan Walters is a Principal Embedded Security Engineer and Group Leader in the MITRE Labs department for Electronics System Development and Embedded Security.

Walters has worked on embedded systems security since arriving at MITRE in 2006. He helped to develop MITRE’s Secure Electronics Lab, which has advanced capabilities for researching implementation security issues such as side-channel leakage, fault induction, and trusted hardware. He has led several research projects for developing tools and techniques to evaluate embedded systems for vulnerabilities.

Walters is also a part-time lecturer at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst where he teaches embedded security topics at the graduate level.

Walters received his M.S. in Computer Science with a focus on machine learning for security applications from Tufts University; and his B.S.E. in Computer Engineering, B.S.E. in Electrical Engineering, and B.S.E. in Mathematics from the University of Michigan.

Jin Wei-Kocsis is an Assistant Professor of Computer & Information Technology (CIT). Prior to coming to Purdue University, Dr. Wei-Kocsis worked as an Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at The University of Akron from 2014 to 2019 and worked as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in 2014.

Her research interests include developing deep learning–driven security and privacy for cyber-physical-social systems, designing hybrid weakly supervised deep learning algorithm exploiting domain knowledge, developing blockchain-powered internet of thing (IoT)-enabled secure and privacy-preserving crowdsourced computing paradigm, designing social sensing-enabled situational awareness mechanism, designing opportunistic and attack-resilient hybrid networking infrastructure for smart grids, developing bio-inspired assured reinforcement learning–based real-time optimal decision making, designing decentralized and secure computing and networking paradigm for deep space exploration, and developing low-complexity machine learning algorithm and its digital VLSI implementation. Based on the research achievements, she has received NSF EAGER Grant, NASA Early Career Faculty Grant, DoE/SuNLaMP Award, UA NSF I-Corps Grants, and Firestone Research Initiative Fellowship Award. She has also achieved multiple best paper awards for the journal and conference publications.

Chester Wisniewski is a principal research scientist at next-generation security leader Sophos. With more than 20 years of professional experience, his interest in security and privacy first peaked while learning to hack from bulletin board text files in the 1980s, and has since been a lifelong pursuit. 

Chester analyzes the massive amounts of attack data gathered by SophosLabs to distill and share relevant information in an effort to improve the industry’s understanding of evolving threats, attacker behaviors and effective security defenses. He’s helped organizations design enterprise-scale defense strategies, served as the primary technical lead on architecting Sophos’ first email security appliance, and consulted on security planning with some of the largest global brands.

Based in Vancouver, Chester regularly speaks at industry events, including RSA Conference, Virus Bulletin, Security BSides (Vancouver, London, Wales, Perth, Austin, Detroit, Los Angeles, Boston, and Calgary) and others. He’s widely recognized as one of the industry’s top security researchers and is regularly consulted by press, appearing on BBC News, ABC, NBC, Bloomberg, CNBC, CBC, NPR, and more.

When not busy fighting cybercrime, Chester spends his free time cooking, cycling, and mentoring new entrants to the security field through his volunteer work with InfoSec BC. Chester is available on Twitter (@chetwisniewski)