亚洲AV

Mason welcomes new Eminent Scholar in Cybersecurity

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Giuseppe Ateniese is the Eminent Scholar for Cybersecurity. Courtesy photo

It鈥檚 not surprising that 亚洲AV鈥檚 prominence in the field of cybersecurity attracted Giuseppe Ateniese to the . Mason has a long history of active teaching and research in cybersecurity. In the 2022聽U.S. News and World Report Best Colleges List Mason ranked聽#28 nationally and #15 for public universities.聽Ateniese, who was recently hired as an Eminent Scholar in Cybersecurity, wants to take Mason to the next level.

鈥淢ason was always on my radar,鈥 says Ateniese. 鈥淪o once this opportunity as an eminent scholar popped up, I was very interested. Mason is providing me with strong support to build a top-notch research group.鈥

Ateniese comes to Mason from Stevens Institute of Technology, where he was聽chair of the computer science department. He taught at Sapienza-University of Rome, served as assistant and associate professor at Johns Hopkins University, and was one of the JHU Information Security Institute founders. His experience in the corporate sector included a stint as a researcher at IBM鈥檚 Zurich research lab and as a scientist at the Information Sciences Institute of the University of Southern California. He also briefly worked as a visiting professor at Microsoft in Redmond, Washington.

In addition to teaching cybersecurity classes, Ateniese expects to lead transformative growth in Mason鈥檚 cybersecurity research portfolio and encourage and foster new and existing collaborations with the and its partners as well as聽other academic, industrial, and governmental institutions in the greater Washington, D.C. area.

Ateniese says he would like to serve as a bridge between different units. 鈥淭his is something I actually learned as department chair,鈥 he says. 鈥淲hen I was able to connect faculty within my department to different units, sometimes I was able to make things happen.鈥 He sees a large part of his role as finding collaborators. 鈥淚 really want to go after bringing cybersecurity to the next level and figure out what is needed at Mason to move in that direction,鈥 he says.

Ateniese鈥檚 research focuses on cloud security and machine learning applied to security and intelligence issues. He is also investigating new security applications for decentralized computing based on blockchain/bitcoin technology.

鈥淪ociety is embracing artificial intelligence, and I鈥檓 concerned that we are doing this in a way that is probably too fast,鈥 he says. 鈥淲e have to consider also security and privacy implications of this technology. My goal is to build a safe and private artificial intelligence framework so that we can ensure that machine learning models are doing what they鈥檙e supposed to do.鈥

He is also investigating new security applications for decentralized computing based on blockchain/bitcoin technology. 鈥淓veryone is talking about bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies,鈥 he says. 鈥淏ut that鈥檚 probably nothing compared to what is possible with blockchains and smart contracts.鈥

Though his appointment is with the and departments, he sees amazing potential collaborations between different groups because cybersecurity spans聽many units. As time goes on, he aims to understand what鈥檚 available and coordinate significant cybersecurity initiatives.

Department of Computer Science chair David Rosenblum says, 鈥淕iuseppe is an internationally leading scholar who brings to Mason an outstanding record of research achievement in computer security, as well as extensive leadership experience in academic administration and entrepreneurship.聽We look forward to supporting him as he leads strategic research efforts in critically important areas such as blockchain technology and trustworthy AI.鈥