Schar School of Policy and Government Terrorism Transnational Crime and Corruption Center (TraCCC)

Schar School of Policy and Government Terrorism Transnational Crime and Corruption Center (TraCCC)

Request Schar School program information

Learn more about the Schar School

Trading under the team name of CyberCrustaceans, ��AV students Anthony Perry and Daniel Horvath—both Honors College students—defeated five finalist teams to win the $20,000 top prize at the Bring Down Counterfeiting Hackathon 2023 (BDC 2023). The hackathon, a nationally advertised competition that began in September, brought together individuals and teams to develop technology-based solutions for combating counterfeiting.

From left, Anthony Perry and Daniel Horvath, aka Team CyberCrustaceans, won the top prize in the Bring Down Counterfeiting Hackathon 2023. Photos by Ayman Rashid/Office of University Branding

BDC 2023 was organized by the Schar School of Policy and Government’s Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center (TraCCC) in partnership with strategy and analytic firm Blue Clarity, which administered the competition. Major sponsors included e-commerce and technology company Amazon.com Inc. and the Global Innovation Policy Center, a department within the U.S. Chamber of Commerce devoted to promoting innovation, creativity, and strong intellectual property protections.

CyberCrustaceans’ $20,000 winning entry, called Veritas Ex Machina, was deemed by a panel of practitioner judges to be a breakthrough combination of X-ray technology, optical scanning, and artificial intelligence designed to sift through enormous volumes of small parcels to detect the likelihood of counterfeit product.

The $10,000 Student Prize, SafeURL, was won by a team of Mason graduate students called Tech Titans who tackled the digital domain of counterfeiting with a system designed to uncover fraudulent websites. By employing sophisticated machine-learning algorithms, they crafted a user-friendly platform that helps users discern the legitimacy of URLs, enhancing online security and trust.

The Tech Titans team, which also took home the $2,500 Crowdsource Prize, included Siva Satyanarayana Raju Pusapati, Sampath Sai Yelleti, Hemanth Kumar Reddy Tiyyagura, Chandra Kiran Viswanath Balusu, Anusha Bhavanam, and Poojasree Keerithipati.

The $10,000 CINA prize for research, sponsored by Mason’s Criminal Investigations and Network Analysis Center (CINA), went to Mason students Salem Abdul-Bak and Krishna Purohit (also an Honors College student) and for the Legitima project, which bridges technology with policy. The program uses serialized tokens and a Chrome extension that functions as a digital passport for products, enhancing consumer trust and enabling verification of authenticity. In addition to $10,000, the students receive a semester of mentoring by CINA experts and the opportunity to present their project to a wider audience.

Three other teams with promising concepts won honorable mention prizes worth $1,000 each, bringing the total prize money to $45,500.

Support and prize money came from a variety of organizations including Amazon, Statista, Mapbox, the National Crime Prevention Council, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Global Innovation Policy Center, and the International Coalition Against Illicit Economies.

TraCCC founding director Louise Shelley converses with Patrick Kilbride, senior vice president of the Global Innovation Policy Center at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Hackathon With Purpose

This is the second Hackathon TraCCC has hosted. The competition featured some 80 contestants—faculty and students from many different universities—registering as teams or individuals and working for more than two months to perfect their ideas. Six competitors making the finals were non-Mason.

The competition has two goals: Bringing attention to the serious harms caused by counterfeiting, and encouraging students and others to develop solutions using technology and policy to address the problem.

Counterfeiting is a global problem: The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development estimates that pirated and counterfeit products make up 2.5 percent of world trade or roughly $464 billion a year. Many if not most of those counterfeit goods present a danger to the public. As an example, during the COVID-19 crisis, TraCCC researchers were able to prevent 67 million counterfeit masks for frontline workers from entering the U.S. market.

“We need the data to show how this problem operates so we can begin to address it,” said TraCCC founding director Louise Shelley of the Hackathon. “And working together, we need public, private, and research partnerships to begin to solve it.”

She added that an additional—and unexpected— benefit of the exercise is to involve technology-oriented students who discover an affinity for policy. She said the participants praised Mason and appreciated the opportunity to demonstrate their knowledge and skills.

Six finalist teams presented their solutions at Mason Square in Arlington, Virginia, on November 4 during Hackathon Demo Day, defending them under questioning from a panel of judges that included leading practitioners from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, the Customs and Border Patrol, and Amazon. While the judges deliberated, a series of notable speakers, including Summer Kostelnik, policy advisor from the White House Office of the Intellectual Property Enforcement, offered their views on trends in counterfeiting and what needs to be done to counter them.

Hackathon 3 will be announced later in 2024.

Topics

Hackathon

Schar School News for November 2023

Schar School Featured Stories

entrepreneurship

Mason Square

Tech Talent Investment Program (TTIP)

Schar School Study Shows 4 ‘Hubs’ of Illicit Trade—and the Reasons They Flourish

Andrew J Schappert — Wed, 27 Sep 2023 15:33:03 +0000

Schar School Study Shows 4 ‘Hubs’ of Illicit Trade—and the Reasons They Flourish Andrew J Schappert Wed, 09/27/2023 - 11:33

In This Story

Anti-Illicit Trade Institute

Request program information

Learn more about the Schar School

Louise Shelley: ‘This study underscores the critical need for governments and the private sector to prioritize the fight against illicit activities…’

A major new academic study highlights four geographic hubs of illicit trade for organized crime and specifies how each of the hot spots shares an enabling environment for criminals. In identifying the locations and the lax regulation and governance gaps that create the illicit trade zones, researchers say law enforcement and policymakers can take action to curtail the massive human, economic, societal, and security harms across the world.

The study, Smugglers’ Paradises in the Global Economy: Growing Threats of Hubs of Illicit Trade to Security and Sustainable Development, and its alarming findings were announced at the 2023 International Law Enforcement Intellectual Property Crime Conference organized by Interpol in Oslo in late September. A copy of the report and the accompanying research can be found on the Hubs of Illicit Trade page.

“This study underscores the critical need for governments and the private sector to prioritize the fight against illicit activities and to crackdown on organized crime within their Free Trade Zones and other hot spots,” said Louise Shelley, Hubs of Illicit Trade project director and University Professor at ��AV. Shelley is also director of the Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center (TraCCC) at Mason’s Schar School of Policy and Government. TraCCC’s Anti-Illicit Trade Institute (AITI), codirected by former U.S. diplomat David M. Luna, also participated in the project.

The study reveals that four global hubs—South America (the Argentina-Brazil-Paraguay tri-border area), Central America (Panama, Guatemala, and Belize), the Middle East (Dubai), and Eastern Europe (Ukraine)—share an enabling environment that fuels illicit trade, facilitated by regulatory laxity, and are points of convergence for different types of criminality, such as corruption, money laundering, and other security threats that contribute to the movement of illicit goods and contraband in Europe and the United States, amongst others.

“Our mission is to advance robust international cooperation, not only with European institutions and inter-governmental organizations but also with national law enforcement authorities,” Luna said from Oslo. “An important step in this direction is to strengthen the policing of Free Trade Zones and foster effective cross-border law enforcement and judicial actions, including participation in diplomatic fora.” Those include the upcoming global tobacco control meetings (MOP3) in Panama, the April 2024 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development Working Party on Countering Illicit Trade, and the Oslo conference.

Topics

Schar School of Policy and Government Terrorism Transnational Crime and Corruption Center (TraCCC)

Schar School News for September 2023

Research

Schar School Featured Stories

Registration Open: Mason’s TraCCC Launches Second Annual Hackathon to Fight Counterfeiters

Andrew J Schappert — Wed, 30 Aug 2023 15:07:37 +0000

Registration Open: Mason’s TraCCC Launches Second Annual Hackathon to Fight Counterfeiters Andrew J Schappert Wed, 08/30/2023 - 11:07

Registration is open for the second annual Bring Down Counterfeiting Hackathon, an event that brings together individuals and teams from around the country in a competition with a vital mission—to interrupt illicit counterfeiting and trafficking—and for a chance to win $50,000 in awards.

The Schar School of Policy and Government’s Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center (TraCCC) at ��AV is partnering with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Global Innovation Policy Center to challenge teams from academic institutions, companies, and other affiliations to design and propose novel technical and policy solutions that prevent counterfeit and pirated goods from entering the stream of commerce and reaching the hands of consumers. Strategy and analytic firm Blue Clarity returns to administer the competition.

Contestants will also be encouraged to create tools that help recognize the spoofing of official U.S. government websites, trademarks, and other services. The winning entry will win the grand prize of $20,000 for the solution a panel of expert judges select as the most effective, scalable, and creative. Other cash prizes will be awarded in a number of categories.

“Counterfeiting is a crime that affects us all. This hackathon will bring students together with policymakers, academic institutions, domain and private sector experts, and other professionals to raise awareness of the threats and generate powerful new ideas to stop this criminal activity,” said University Professor Louise Shelley, founding director of the TraCCC. “The results will also be used to inform our ongoing research on counterfeit and other criminal supply chain networks.”

This year, challenge organizers are looking for novel technical solutions, such as new technology to advance counterfeited product identification devices or advanced algorithms to secure supply chains and identify counterfeit goods. Solutions offered in the competition should have direct applicability to stated challenges that government agencies like the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and others are actively working to overcome. Last year’s winning entry, chosen from 11 finalists of 30 entries, was a search engine extension that exposed fraudulent pharmacies and disrupted the flow of counterfeit medicine in the U.S.

The contest is important—counterfeiting remains a persistent retail-industry problem around the world. Counterfeiters deprive brand owners of the value of their intellectual property, compete unfairly with honest entrepreneurs, and may place the health and safety of consumers at risk. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) estimates that pirated and counterfeit products make up 2.5 percent of world trade or roughly $464 billion a year.

This 2023 hackathon challenge launched in August and is open to anyone. Registration for the event is free.

See the Bring Down Counterfeiting 2023 Hackathon registration form for event for competition details and to register. Teams will have several weeks to learn more from an array of public and private-sector experts and stakeholders about the global scope of the counterfeiting challenge, the societal and economic risks, industry best practices, and more. Full hackathon rules, submission guidelines, and judging criteria can be found on the Bring Down Counterfeiting 2023 Hackathon registration form.

Interested in joining as a sponsor or getting involved? Please contact expeditionhacks@blueclarity.io. Stay informed via Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and X.

Read Mason/Amazon hackathon is a win for Mason students for last year’s inaugural hackathon results.

In This Story

Schar School of Policy and Government Terrorism Transnational Crime and Corruption Center (TraCCC)

Request program information from Schar

Learn more about the Schar School

Topics

Hackathon

Trafficking

Mason Square

Schar School News for August 2023

Schar School Featured Stories

Tech Talent Investment Pipeline (TTIP)

TTIP

Tech Talent Investment Program

New TraCCC fellowship aims to strengthen democracy, fight corruption in three Central American countries

Colleen Rich — Mon, 03 Apr 2023 15:10:01 +0000

New TraCCC fellowship aims to strengthen democracy, fight corruption in three Central American countries Colleen Rich Mon, 04/03/2023 - 11:10

In This Story

The Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center (TraCCC) at ��AV has received $9.9 million to establish a unique fellowship that will provide nationals from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras critical tools to help strengthen democracy and fight corruption in their home countries.

TraCCC founder and director Louise Shelley. Photo by Alexis Glenn

The Democracy and Anti-Corruption Defenders Fellowship, part of a multi-donor and multi-institutional effort that includes the U.S. government, will begin in the summer of 2023 and run through September 2025. Three cohorts of 20 fellows each will include those who have worked in either the public sector, independent media, and/or civil society in their respective countries.

The fellowship will be conducted in Spanish at Mason Square in Arlington, Costa Rica’s University of Peace, with which TraCCC has had a long-standing relationship, and online for those who cannot attend at those locations.

“At this point, this is only for people from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras,” said Louise Shelley, a University Professor at Mason and TraCCC’s founder and director. “They are the ones where there has been a serious erosion of the rule of law and the back-sliding of democracy.”

The fellowship is just right for Mason, a university committed to solving the world’s grand challenges by nurturing critical thinkers and fearless leaders. TraCCC already has an international reputation for understanding the links between terrorism, transnational crime, and corruption, and helping to formulate policy on those issues.

“I’m confident it will be highly consequential,” Mason Provost Mark Ginsberg said of the fellowship, “as it will strengthen the expertise and capacities of champions of democracy and anti-corruption who are vitally important for preserving the rule of law in the region.”

Claudia Escobar Mejía, a Distinguished Visiting Professor in Mason’s Schar School of Policy and Government, and co-director of the fellowship with Camilo Pardo-Herrera, a senior analyst at TraCCC, said the fellowships are in two parts.

Mason Square is one of the sites where these international fellows will received training and mentoring. Photo by Ron Aira/Creative Services

The first includes a seminar series focused on the three pillars of the fellowship: institutions, anti-corruption, and democracy.

There will be opportunities for fellows to examine transnational crime, including money laundering and corruption networks, and how investigative journalists and other actors can work collectively to combat corruption and support transitions to democracy. English language instruction will also be offered to all fellows.

The second part of the fellowships include an anti-corruption lab intended to produce deliverables that propose regional solutions in democracy-training and anti-corruption.

Each fellow will have a mentor and opportunities for internships in their particular fields through organizations partnering with TraCCC.

There also will be three gatherings for each cohort: one at Mason Square, one in Costa Rica, and one at the University of Monterrey in Mexico, where the group will be hosted at an annual anti-corruption academic conference.

“They are going to have different experiences in which they are going to build up their capacities to address problems that are really undermining the rule of law and driving migration to the United States,” Escobar Mejía said. “These areas in northern Central America are becoming the hubs of transnational criminal organizations that promote corruption and organized crime. So we’re trying to build their capacities to address problems in the whole region.”

“The important issue is that Mason has a chance to impact significantly in the trajectory of democracy,” said Pardo-Herrera, PhD Public Policy ’19. “We are going to be able to select the best people who really want to have an impact. That is very significant.”

Mason is the natural place for the fellowship to live, Escobar Mejía and Pardo-Herrera said.

Not only is the university close to Washington, D.C., which Escobar Mejía calls “the capital of the international community,” its other academic resources will help TraCCC create new tools for investigations.

In addition, Pardo-Herrera said, “Mason is committed to diversity. Mason is a place where people understand different perspectives, and a place where people can connect to the difficulties of others because of that diversity.”

Bottom line, said Judy Deane, TraCCC’s deputy director, “This fellowship is a practical way of helping individuals who are fighting against corruption and fighting for democracy. In that sense, they are fighting for us.”

Topics

Schar School of Policy and Government Terrorism Transnational Crime and Corruption Center (TraCCC)

Mason Square

Research

Schar School News April 2023

Mason Momentum

Mason/Amazon hackathon is a win for Mason students

Colleen Rich — Mon, 07 Nov 2022 17:44:39 +0000

Mason/Amazon hackathon is a win for Mason students Colleen Rich Mon, 11/07/2022 - 12:44

Nervousness, shock, disbelief, exhaustion. Those were among the emotions ��AV freshmen Pranay Yella and Pranav Reddippali said they experienced at the 2022 Bring Down Counterfeiting Public Policy Hackathon.

In the end, though, it was worth it—$15,000 to be exact.

Team Nimbus—Pranav Reddippali, Srivatsa Krishnamurthy, Pranay Yella—took second place at the Mason/Amazon Bring Down Counterfeiting Public Policy Hackathon. Photo by Blue Clarity

That is how much Team Nimbus—which included Yella, an information technology major; Reddippali, a computer science major; and their friend from the University of Virginia, Srivatsa Krishnamurthy—were awarded as the event’s second-place finisher.

Their proposal: Develop a Google Chrome extension that can prevent the consumption of counterfeit medicine by focusing on exposing counterfeit pharmacies.

Louise Shelley, founder and director of Mason's TraCCC. Photo by John Boal Photography

Team Hypercube earned the $20,000 first prize for its concept of a national counterfeiting index through an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered blockchain that would allow federal, state and local law enforcement to share information, and consumers to verify the authenticity of a product through their phones.

“Opportunities like this are definitely something to be taken seriously,” Yella said. “An idea is a free thing, but once you implement it, it can revolutionize the world.”

[Mason and the Bring Down Counterfeiting Public Policy Hackathon are featured in Amazon's 2023 Brand Protection Report, which was part of this Good Morning America report.]

The hackathon, co-hosted by Mason’s Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center (TraCCC) and Amazon, was held Nov. 5 at the Homeland Security Investigations Lab in Arlington, Virginia.

TraaCCC is located at Mason Square (formerly Arlington Campus), where the 345,000-square -oot Fuse building is under construction, scheduled to open in 2025. Fuse will serve as a technological hub in the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor, connecting students, faculty, industry, and government.

Saturday's hackathon, administered by Blue Clarity, challenged teams from U.S. and international academic institutions, companies, and other affiliations to develop innovative ideas to improve public–private collaborations against the industry-wide global challenge of counterfeiting. More than 280 individuals registered for the hackathon. More than 30 teams submitted proposals by the deadline, 11 of which made the finals.

An panel of judges scored the submissions based on potential impact, scalability, creativity and design.

In developing the submissions, participants had access to experts and mentors from Amazon, law enforcement, tech and retail industries, academia, and government.

From Mason, those included the Criminal Investigations and Network Analysis Center (CINA), the College of Science, the School of Computing, and the Antonin Scalia Law School.

“Only effective public–private collaboration and a relentless pursuit of solutions can solve this problem,” Mason President Gregory Washington said. “This important event is a step in that direction because this hackathon involves policy. We’re not just pursuing greater understanding of counterfeiting, we’re trying to improve the response to the problem. We appreciate Amazon’s commitment to work with Mason to find innovative solutions and to provide opportunities for Mason students to take part in these challenging hands-on experiences.”

Added Kebharu Smith, director of Amazon’s Counterfeit Crimes Unit: “We’re excited to be, as Amazon, part of this hackathon with Mason and TraCCC and the other partners that participated in this first hackathon, to really think about ways that we can fight counterfeiters and the scourge of counterfeiting. This partnership is key to us moving forward and going after counterfeiters and beating them at this threat.”

Kebharu Smith, director of Amazon’s Counterfeit Crimes Unit, spoke with the media following the hackathon. Photo by Blue Clarity

Which brings us back to Yella and Reddippali, the Mason students who finished second in the competition with their friend from UVA.

Asked why they decided to focus on counterfeit medicine and pharmacies, Reddippali said, “Because we felt it had the most impact on people with lives at stake. With other counterfeit goods, it is the stealing of intellectual property. But we felt this was more urgent.”

Yella, Reddippali, and Krishnamurthy, all from Ashburn, Virginia, met in high school. Reddippali said Yella came up with the idea of the Chrome extension, but they all collaborated on the details that include checking the legitimacy of online pharmacies and creating a forum where users can provide feedback that can be accessed by local, state and federal authorities.

“They were so thoughtful in thinking about counterfeiting as a health and safety issue,” said Louise Shelley, TraCCC’s founder and director. “And they were so incredibly clever in thinking about solutions.”

They are also thinking about the future of their project.

“We’re definitely going to go on with this project in a more serious way,” Yella said. “We feel this product can revolutionize the medicine industry. We definitely want to use our funds to make it successful in the future.”

In the moment, though, “They were so excited,” Shelley said, “they were shaking.”

Other awards:

Mason’s Criminal Investigations Network and Analysis Center sponsored a special $10,000 prize to fund follow-up research by A-CAPP Team #1, which proposed producing a central database to help law enforcement and private businesses track individuals and factories that manufacture or sell counterfeit items.

The $5,000 student prize went to The Spartan Solution, which demonstrated a cipher-based solution to combat counterfeit listings on e-commerce sites before the listings reach consumers.

The crowdsource prize of $2,000 went to Team G.I.N., which detailed creation of a network, accessible by a QR code, that will allow everyone the ability to distinguish between genuine and counterfeit goods.

Topics

Schar School of Policy and Government Terrorism Transnational Crime and Corruption Center (TraCCC)

Students

Amazon

Arlington campus

Information Sciences and Technology Department

TraCCC and Amazon team up for policy hackathon to stop counterfeiters

Colleen Rich — Fri, 05 Aug 2022 16:18:35 +0000

TraCCC and Amazon team up for policy hackathon to stop counterfeiters Colleen Rich Fri, 08/05/2022 - 12:18

In This Story

��AV’s Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center (TraCCC) and Amazon have joined forces to help combat counterfeiting and its criminal supply chain networks.

The method? Co-hosting the 2022 Bring Down Counterfeiting Public Policy Hackathon, a first-of-its-kind event, administered by Blue Clarity, that will challenge teams from U.S. academic institutions, companies and other affiliations to develop innovative ideas to combat these global challenges.

Registration opened August 5 ahead of an August 27 virtual kickoff event. An in-person final judging will be on November 5, when teams will compete for more than $20,000 in prizes. Go to expeditionhacks.com/counterfeiting for details and to register.

“Our goal is to bring together U.S. policy makers, domain experts, and academic institutions to raise awareness of the threats and generate powerful new ideas to stop this criminal activity,” said TraCCC Director Louise Shelley, a University Professor in the Schar School. “We are excited to have Amazon as a partner in this initial event and we appreciate their leadership in fostering a culture of open cooperation and innovation. The results from this hackathon will also be used to inform our ongoing research on counterfeit and other criminal supply chain networks.”

As ideas are developed, teams will be able to engage real-time with a diverse group of mentors from across the public and private sectors, including Edward Huang, a member of TraCCC and an associate professor in Mason's College of Engineering and Computing.

“Mason is taking on these global challenges that we must confront as humanity,” Mason alum Paul Misener, Amazon’s vice president of global innovation policy and communications, said in April at the groundbreaking for the Fuse building at Mason Square in Arlington.

“The fact is, Mason is not just a pipeline for tech talent,” Shelley said. “We have a unique perspective that Amazon sought out, which is to place tech in context to inform policy. This makes Mason different from other tech programs, and is what brought Amazon to us in the first place.”

The hackathon continues and expands Mason’s partnership with Amazon.

The Fuse building is part of a large-scale expansion at Mason Square. Scheduled to open in 2025, it will be a 345,000-square-foot facility that will serve as a technological hub in the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor, connecting students, faculty, industry, and government.

The campus, which is adjacent to Amazon’s new headquarters, is part of Mason’s commitment to expanding its programs in computer science, computer engineering, information technology and other closely related fields to rapidly increase the number of highly skilled graduates for Amazon and other regional employers.

Mason also just completed a collaboration with Amazon and the Maryland Chamber Foundation in a program that provided current and potential computer science teachers in Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, D.C. with an opportunity to shadow Amazon experts and take a companion three-credit, graduate-level class at Mason. That program is now funded by Google.

“Mason’s partnership with Amazon to curate real-world experiential learning initiatives like the TraCCC hackathon positions Mason students as some of the best-trained, work-ready talent pipelines in the nation,” said Liza Wilson Durant, Mason’s associate provost for strategic initiatives and community engagement. “This event not only supports our students’ professional development, but will lead to impactful solutions to a challenging real-world threat.”

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development estimates that pirated and counterfeit products make up 2.5% (roughly $464 billion) a year in world trade. Counterfeiters deprive brand owners of the value of their intellectual property and compete unfairly with honest entrepreneurs. The supply chains of counterfeiters may also intersect with transnational networks in a wide range of illicit behavior, including illegal trade in narcotics, arms, people, and wildlife.

“Amazon is known for its customer obsession, and a critical part of that is earning and maintaining our customers’ trust,” said Mary Beth Westmoreland, vice president of brand protection at Amazon. “While we are proud of the progress we have made, we will not stop until we drive counterfeits to zero in our store, and we will continue to invest and innovate until we get there.”

Topics

Schar School of Policy and Government Terrorism Transnational Crime and Corruption Center (TraCCC)

Amazon

Hackathon

Schar School News August 2022

Cybersecurity

Podcast - EP 39: Russia's war in Ukraine is tied to corruption, organized crime

Damian Cristodero — Fri, 20 May 2022 16:39:34 +0000

Podcast - EP 39: Russia's war in Ukraine is tied to corruption, organized crime Damian Cristodero Fri, 05/20/2022 - 12:39

In This Story

Gregory Washington

Access to Excellence podcast

Louise Shelley, a University Professor and director of Mason’s Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center explains to Mason President Gregory Washington the connections between the war in Ukraine and Russian corruption and organized crime, and how criminals and terrorists take advantage in diverse ways of the globalized world in which we live. Shelley’s center exposes that criminality and recently helped take 55 million counterfeit and sub-standard medical masks out of circulation worldwide with the takedown of more than 50,000 online marketplaces and social media posts.

Topics

Podcast Episode

podcast

Schar School of Policy and Government Terrorism Transnational Crime and Corruption Center (TraCCC)

Russia

Ukraine

transnational crime

Corruption

After the Beirut explosions, the grandma of this Mason grad brought hope through the piano

Mariam Aburdeineh — Mon, 31 Aug 2020 00:10:17 +0000

After the Beirut explosions, the grandma of this Mason grad brought hope through the piano Mariam Aburdeineh Sun, 08/30/2020 - 20:10

Amy Melki. Photo provided.

May Abboud Melki’s home was in shambles following the massive August 4 explosion in Beirut, Lebanon. Glass shards from blasted windows and debris filled her home, and nearly everything she owned had been damaged. That is, except for her piano.

Thanks to Melki’s granddaughters, including Amy Melki, a 2020 graduate of ��AV, beauty and resilience were seen amidst the chaos, as a video they shared on social media of their grandmother playing “Auld Lang Syne” on the piano surrounded by rubble went viral and made international headlines.

“It’s her form of therapy,” said Melki, who received the video via text from her mother in Beirut. “[During the Lebanese Civil War, my grandmother] found something in her music and often reverted to playing the piano as a way of coping with the material loss and the human loss.”

The piano has sentimental value too, Melki said, as her grandmother was gifted it 60 years ago on her honeymoon.

Comments on the video have spoken to how Melki’s grandmother embodies the Lebanese spirit.

“The symbol of true Lebanese resilience isn’t just found in [my grandmother]; it’s found in our nation,” said Melki, who graduated with a master’s in global affairs. “I’m just so proud that she was the one to carry that message and remind people that even in your darkest, most desperate times, we will be able to rebuild.”

Resilience has been part of the Melki family story. Amy Melki’s grandparents survived the 1975-1990 civil war while raising four kids, she said; and her parents, who were refugees escaping war, founded an NGO in Lebanon that works with Syrian refugees and underprivileged communities.

Melki is proud of that history, she said.

“Lebanon for me is the country that molded me, the country that made me who I am,” said Melki, who was born in the United States and grew up in Lebanon. “Wherever I go, I hope I can in some way give back.”

May Abboud Melki assesses the damage to her home after the Beirut explosions. Photo provided.

Melki said she hopes to one day work for the World Bank or an international relief organization.

Right now, she is making an international impact working at Mason. In July, Melki joined the Schar School of Policy and Government’s Global Terrorist Trends and Analysis Center (GTTAC), where she analyzes incidents of global terrorism for a congressionally mandated database.

“I really love it,” Melki said. “It’s such a learning experience and everyone working on it, like Dr. Judy [Deane] and Dr. Mahmut [Cengiz], genuinely care to help you learn and become a better researcher.”

“This tragedy [in Lebanon] took place during the second week of training for our new cohort,” said Deane, deputy director of Mason’s Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center (TraCCC). “It must have affected Amy’s ability to concentrate, but it didn’t show in her work.”

“Like Amy, many of our GTTAC staff have had their lives impacted by violence and terrorism, and they understand why it is so important for our project to provide accurate information about these issues to the world,” Deane said. “We feel lucky to have Amy working with us and will benefit from her understanding of the complexities of violence in the Middle East.”

Melki said she wishes such complexities weren’t the reality in Lebanon, but her faith gives her hope. It’s divine intervention, she said, that her grandparents weren’t home during the explosion.

“Although we don’t have all the answers to all of our questions, although we wonder why did this happen, [my grandmother] felt at peace because she was reminded that God is always by her side,” Melki said. “I feel incredibly blessed and grateful that God protected my family.”

Students in the Community

Schar School of Policy and Government Terrorism Transnational Crime and Corruption Center (TraCCC)

Schar School

global affairs

Students

What Does it Take to Understand Global Terrorism? This Mason Team is Finding Out.

Anonymous — Wed, 06 May 2020 18:21:04 +0000

What Does it Take to Understand Global Terrorism? This Mason Team is Finding Out. Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 05/06/2020 - 14:21

Originally published on May 6, 2020

To defend against terrorism, you have to understand it. Thanks to more than a dozen students, alumni and faculty at ��AV working on a digital terrorism database, everyone from policy makers to researchers around the world will be a step closer to that goal.

“There are many other databases focusing on [terrorism], but very few have the international reach that we do, most of them are regional or country-specific,” said Vincent Nicosia, a 2019 alumnus of the Schar School of Policy and Government who is working on the database at the Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center (TraCCC).

Since the early 1990s, the U.S. Congress has mandated that the State Department produce a report on global terrorism. Part of that includes keeping a database of every terrorist incident around the world, said TraCCC Deputy Director Judith Deane.

Development Services Group Inc. (DSG), partnering with Mason, was awarded the five-year contract from the State Department in August 2018 to work on the reports. Mason hires and trains the multilingual data analysts who interpret, categorize and enter the information, while DSG produces a statistical annex based on the data, Deane said.

“We’re really thrilled to get this,” Deane said. “It’s an educational opportunity for Mason students, and it’s a real opportunity for students to contribute something in the world.”

As the database is congressionally mandated, it informs foreign policy decisions, said Mason professor Mahmut Cengiz, senior data analyst on the project.

Mason’s team complements DSG’s automated open-source information gathering, by analyzing the incidents to ensure the data is as accurate as possible. It’s an innovative approach, Deane said, and unlike most other data collection efforts, the Mason team collects up to 52 attributes for each incident, including facts on the perpetrators, targets, victims and weapons.

Many students have cultural and historic understandings of the countries they work on, as they’ve lived in the regions and can speak the languages, Cengiz said. All have studied terrorism or counterterrorism.

The diversified staff and their expertise help ensure the database is not overly U.S.-centric in its interpretations, which had been a critique of the database before it was in Mason’s hands, Deane said. There are also members, such as 2017 Antonin Scalia Law School alumnus Haider Semaism, who have been personally affected by terrorism.

The database also looks at trends over time. For some students, the findings have been surprising.

“There’s a lot of different security issues that I wasn’t aware of before,” Nicosia said. “There are hotspots in areas like Chile and the Philippines; most people in the United States would probably imagine terrorism is a Middle Eastern phenomenon, but it’s truly a global issue.”

Being near the hub of U.S. government and policy also allows students to learn from experts who have visited as guest speakers. This semester the team heard from leaders, including former military advisor to the president of Bangladesh General Munir Munirizzaman Ret, former deputy director of the National Counterterrorism Center Russell Travers and former acting and deputy director of the CIA Michael Morell, who is also a Schar School Fellow.

“These are some of the same people who are going to be looking at the data when it’s published,” said Caitlin Ford, who earned her bachelor’s in December and returned to Mason for her master’s in public policy. “It’s helpful to get multiple points of view so that we can be as objective and well-rounded as possible.”

“For education and professional growth, this is the place to be right now,” said Vladimir Semizhonov, an international security graduate student originally from Kazakhstan. “It has to do with phenomenon that stands very tall in the political and global agenda, and is not a purely academic exercise.”

In addition to learning more about counterterrorism, their efforts have global value.

“It makes me even more proud to be an American knowing that we are helping combat [terrorism] and that possibly one day we don’t have to have a database for this,” Ford said.

This Mason alumnus lost a friend due to ISIS. Here’s how he’s fighting back.

Mariam Aburdeineh — Wed, 29 Apr 2020 00:05:00 +0000

This Mason alumnus lost a friend due to ISIS. Here’s how he’s fighting back. Mariam Aburdeineh Tue, 04/28/2020 - 20:05

When Haider Semaisim works on the federally mandated database of global incidents of terrorism with ��AV’s Schar School of Policy and Government, he does so with pride. It is not only an educational and professional endeavor, he said. “It’s personal.”

“Iraq is one of the countries that suffered a lot from terrorism,” said Semaisim, an Iraqi-American. “[My friend, Zaid] was killed in 2011 by ISIS.”

Haider Semaisim is part of a Mason team analyzing terrorist incidents around the world for the U.S. State Department. Photo provided.

Zaid, who Semaisim said was working as a first lieutenant for the Iraqi Army, responded to an order to liberate hostages in a home. Tragically, the house was booby-trapped and exploded, he said.

“It was very devastating,” said Semaisim, who earned his master of laws from Mason’s Antonin Scalia Law School in 2017. “This project is giving me retribution in a way, that I am fighting terrorism through the keyboard.”

As Semaisim analyzes terrorist incidents for the database from open-source media, he helps trace terrorist trends and strategies.

“When we look at a terrorist organization holistically over one or two years, we notice something that a real-time follower would not notice,” Semaisim said.

That’s one reason the database provides critical insight for policy makers, he said.

Semaisim said he primarily analyzes incidents from Iraq, and his fluency in Arabic and understanding of Iraqi culture and politics allow him to bring a unique expertise to the project.

He describes the project as “the good fight,” but he is also passionate about making a difference in other areas.

Before coming to the United States in 2014, Semaisim said he was a lawyer in Iraq doing criminal and divorce law.

Semaisim became a U.S. citizen in 2018. Photo provided.

“I was not very optimistic about the future of Iraq, and the United States is a beacon of freedom,” said Semaisim, who became a U.S. citizen in 2018.

Some of Semaisim’s friends were not as fortunate, he said. Learning about their challenges in gaining legal status inspired him to switch his interests to immigration law.

“There’s a lot of people who deserve to be here, who would contribute a lot, who seek to have a better life to care for their children and want to be here,” Semaisim said. “With just the right type of help, they can live their lives normally.”

Thanks to his Mason education, Semaisim believes he will be on his way to helping after he passes the bar exam.

“George Mason is an amazing university,” Semaisim said, adding that the law school professors, such as his favorite, Michael Davis, are respected lawyers who not only teach from textbooks, but from real-life experience.

Even when Semaisim would disagree with peers or professors, he said his Mason education instilled in him “respect of the argument and how to accept differences.”

“Haider is a hard worker, eager to learn, willing to give back, and fully appreciative of the education he received,” Davis said. “There are some students I think will do well in the future, and then there are those students like Haider, who I am sure they will do well. He was an asset to our law school and a model for other LLM students.”

Schar School of Policy and Government Terrorism Transnational Crime and Corruption Center (TraCCC)

Antonin Scalia Law School

Scalia Law School