Nowadays, as computing devices connected to the Internet become ubiquitous, society’s overwhelming reliance on the increasingly interconnected cyberspace makes its security more important than ever. In the never-ending arms race, cyber attackers and defenders constantly analyze the vulnerabilities of each other and develop new tactics to defeat their opponents. As cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) techniques keep reshaping our world, especially in the new era of the 5G network technology equipped with edge computing and unlimited data capacities, the next cyberwar may be decided by AI: cyberattacks and defenses could be instrumented by the revolutionary AI-vs-AI competition within a decentralized framework.
By envisioning future cyber threats with unprecedented offensive capabilities that may lead to catastrophic disruptions such as a pandemic in the cyberspace (i.e., cyber pandemic), in this talk, Prof. Yanfang (Fanny) Ye of Case Western Reserve University will introduce her team’s most recent research works in preparation for the development of next-generation cyber defense systems against future cyber pandemics. The designed and developed next-generation cyber defense systems will also help build a new kind of industrial base for various applications such as digital health and hybrid autonomous manufacturing, one that will be far more responsive, resilient, and secure.
Prof. Yanfang (Fanny) Ye is the Theodore and Dana Schroeder Associate Professor in the Department of Computer and Data Sciences (CDS) at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU). Before joining academia, she was the Principal Scientist in Comodo Security Solutions, Inc. (2010-2013), and formerly the R&D Deputy Director at Kingsoft Internet Security Corporation (2008-2010). Her research mainly focuses on cybersecurity, data mining, machine learning, and health intelligence.
In addition to a series of publications, Prof. Ye’s proposed techniques have significantly reduced the time needed to detect new malicious software —from weeks to seconds, which have been incorporated into popular commercial cybersecurity products including Comodo and Kingsoft Antivirus that protect millions of users worldwide. In recent years, she has expanded her research to health intelligence with a focus on combating the opioid epidemic and the COVID-19 crisis.
Prof. Ye recently received the Research Award (2020) at CWRU, the MetroLab Innovation Award (2020), the NSF Career Award (2019), the AICS 2019 Challenge Problem Winner, the ACM SIGKDD 2017 Best Paper Award and ACM SIGKDD 2017 Best Student Paper Award (Applied Data Science Track), the IEEE EISIC 2017 Best Paper Award, and the New Researcher of the Year Award (2017) at WVU. As the PI/co-PI, she has brought in over $6M dollars in research funding (~$4M as the PI) from multiple federal agencies in support of her research works in recent years. Prof. Ye is currently serving as an Associate Editor in IEEE TBD, IEEE TDSC, and ACM TOPS; she has also served as an AC/SPC/PC of top-tier conferences in her fields. More information about her work can be found here.
Contact Ginny Watterson for Zoom link.