Community Building and
Birds of a Feather Sessions
As part of the 2022 NSF Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace PI meeting, we reserved an hour for additional community and BoF sessions, taking place at the end of Day 1 on Wednesday, June 1 from 6-7 p.m. ET. These were meant to be informal discussions, covering any topics of interest to the community. There were several topics we arranged in advance. In addition, any attendee could propose a BoF on-site through lunchtime of June 1 on a first-come, first-served basis until all available rooms were full. We added any additional BoFs to this webpage along with room assignments.
Birds of a Feather Topics
1. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Cybersecurity Research and Education
2. Writing (Successful) SaTC CAREER Proposals
3. Conference Review Process
4. Developing Fruitful Academic, Industry, & Agency Partnerships
5. Sustainable Security Tools
6. Mitigating Harassment and Chilling Effects
7. Tenure Track Tips for Success
8. Need-Based Funding for Undergraduate Students Pursuing Cybersecurity Pathways (Including Community Colleges)
9. Biometrics
Birds of a Feather Topic Descriptions
1. Title: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Cybersecurity Research and Education
Co-Leads: Aunshul Rege (Temple University), Brian Payne (Old Dominion University)
Description: This session focused on issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in cybersecurity education and research. Specifically, we discussed how DEI efforts should be baked into all aspects of education and research: program design and implementation, promotion/advertising, recruitment, data collection and metrics, evidence-based improvements, and long-term sustenance and growth of these efforts.
Location: Potomac I
2. Title: Writing (Successful) SaTC CAREER Proposals
Co-Leads: Murtuza Jadliwala (The University of Texas at San Antonio)
Description: This session focused on the topic of SaTC CAREER proposals. Discussion in this session revolved around the topics of: i) Research plan organization in a SaTC CAREER proposal, ii) Teaching and Broader Impact plans, iii) SaTC-specific evaluation plans, and iv) PI- and institution-specific experiences, e.g., experiences of CAREER PIs from 4-year institutes or institutes without PhD programs, CAREER PIs from Minority Serving Institutes (MSIs), etc. This session invited both junior faculty, who are planning to submit a proposal to the CAREER program, to ask questions and get clarifications, as well as, successful CAREER PIs to share their experiences and wisdom.
Location: Potomac II
3. Title: Conference Review Process
Co-Leads: Lujo Bauer (Carnegie Mellon University), Kevin Butler (University of Florida), Michelle Mazurek (University of Maryland at College Park), Tom Ristenpart (Cornell Tech)
Description: Now that the top security conferences have all experimented with some form of rolling submissions and other tweaks to review processes (like mandatory external review, organizing the PC into subcommittees, major revision even with a single submission deadline, tasking a "senior" PC with more responsibility), we fostered a discussion to share lessons learned with each other and the community. What worked? Did reviewing get better or worse? Did we broaden the range of people who publish or topics that appear at top conferences? How was change measured?
Location: Potomac III
4. Title: Developing Fruitful Academic, Industry, & Agency Partnerships
Co-Leads: Kevin Kornegay (Morgan StateUniversity ), Eric Clemons (National Security Agency), and Sam Visner (Mitre)
Description: This session focused on the necessary ingredients to establish fruitful and sustainable partnerships between academia, industry, and federal agency. We discussed some challenges and solutions using a successful use case. Lastly, we provided a few comments regarding best practices.
Location: Potomac IV
5. Title: Sustainable Security Tools
Co-Leads: Michalis Faloutsos (University of California Riverside)
Description: This session discussed the challenges in the design, development, maintenance, and adoption of security analysis tools. How do we as a community incentivize the creation of usable and effective tools? What software development challenges and requirements are unique to security tools? How well do stakeholders such as developers, tool designers, and security researchers expect tools to work in practice, and which of these expectations are feasible? How can we evaluate these tools for such expected properties?
Location: Potomac V
Topics Suggested On-Site by Attendees:
6. Title: Mitigating Harassment and Chilling Effects
Lead: Susan E. McGregor (Columbia University)
Location: Washington A
7. Title: Tenure Track Tips for Success
Lead: Shiri Dori-Hacohen (University of Connecticut)
Location: Washington B
8. Title: Need-Based Funding for Undergraduate Students Pursuing Cybersecurity Pathways (Including Community Colleges)
Lead: April Christina Curley (Last Mile Education Fund)
Location: Capitol Room
9. Title: Biometrics
Lead: Abhijit Sarkar (Virginia Tech)
Location: Potomac VI