On February 21, 2013, the Kostas Institute hosted a workshop on Manufacturing Technologies for Nano-Enabled Products.  Organized by the National Science Foundation Center for High-rate Nanomanufacturing (www.nano.neu.edu), the workshop was to develop a strategy and vision for a new national Institute for Nanomaterials Manufacturing.  Dr. Ahmed Busnaina, the Director of the Center and a professor at Northeastern University, led the workshop.  Other speakers included Dr. Carol Barry, Associate Director of the Center and a professor at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell, and Dr. Jeff Morse, Managing Director of the National Nanomanufacturing Network in Amherst.

The US Air Force, the US Naval Research Lab, the Draper Lab, the Connecticut Center for Advanced Technology, Tufts University, and a range of companies including Entegris, Nanocom, NanoTech, Raytheon and United Technologies participated in the workshop.

The post Manufacturing Technologies for Nano-Enabled Projects appeared first on The Kostas Research Institute for Homeland Security.

The post Regional Response Team 1 Meeting appeared first on The Kostas Research Institute for Homeland Security.

As law­makers are con­sid­ering major cyber­se­cu­rity leg­is­la­tion, the Northeastern del­e­ga­tion of fac­ulty and industry experts joined U.S. Reps. William Keating (D-MA) and Michael McCaul (R-TX), chairman of the House Home­land Secu­rity Sub­com­mittee on Over­sight, Inves­ti­ga­tions and Man­age­ment, as well as Rick “Ozzie” Nelson, director of the Center for Strategic and Inter­na­tional Studies Home­land Secu­rity and Coun­tert­er­rorism Pro­gram, to call for a robust, coor­di­nated fed­eral research and devel­op­ment pro­gram to improve the resilience of cyber­se­cu­rity net­works and infrastructure.

Citing numerous existing threats such as for-profit hacking schemes, mal­ware aimed at weak mobile devices and attacks tar­geting major infra­struc­tures that con­trol key soci­etal resources, pro­fes­sors Engin Kirda and William Robertson said the nature of the threats today are influ­enced by our daily depen­dency on the Internet making intruders more sophis­ti­cated than ever before.

“The Internet itself has become a crit­ical infra­struc­ture,” said Kirda, the Sy and Laurie Stern­berg Asso­ciate Pro­fessor of Infor­ma­tion Assur­ance in the Col­lege of Com­puter and Infor­ma­tion Sci­ence and the Depart­ment of Elec­trical and Com­puter Engi­neering, and the director of Northeastern’s Insti­tute for Infor­ma­tion Assur­ance. “Research can play a big role in devel­oping auto­mated approaches to detect and mit­i­gate attacks.”

North­eastern, he added, is well posi­tioned to take a lead role in this area through col­lab­o­ra­tions in areas such as psy­chology, crim­i­nology and economics.

Kirda is the cofounder and codi­rector of the Inter­na­tional Secure Sys­tems Lab, a col­lab­o­ra­tive effort of Euro­pean and U.S. researchers focused on com­puter secu­rity issues. Robertson, assis­tant pro­fessor in the Col­lege of Com­puter and Infor­ma­tion Sci­ence and the Depart­ment of Elec­trical and Com­puter Engi­neering, is also part of this inter­na­tional lab.

Joining Kirda and Robertson in the dis­cus­sion were Mel Bern­stein, senior vice provost for research and grad­uate edu­ca­tion, and former director of the Depart­ment of Home­land Security’s Office of Uni­ver­sity Pro­grams, and Stephen Flynn, codi­rector of the university’s Kostas Research Insti­tute for Home­land Security.

Flynn noted that America is more exposed than any other country in terms of phys­ical infra­struc­ture tied to IT, pointing to the country’s power grid, water and waste­water sys­tems. He said the United States must sup­ple­ment its pre­ven­tion and defense efforts with a greater focus on resilience – a key area of focus at the Kostas Research Institute.

The White House has recently intro­duced leg­is­la­tion that seeks to bol­ster national cyber­se­cu­rity pro­tec­tions to meet the chal­lenges pre­sented by evolving dig­ital threats, though critics have pointed to the bill’s require­ment that pri­vate com­puter sys­tems meet cer­tain secu­rity standards.

At the briefing, the North­eastern team pushed for the bill to incor­po­rate the impor­tance of including uni­ver­si­ties as part­ners in under­taking research that will lead to devel­op­ment of new cyberde­fense technologies.

Keating said devel­oping strategic part­ner­ships between gov­ern­ment, the pri­vate sector, busi­ness and acad­emia is crit­ical to over­coming cyberthreats. He said last week’s mas­sive power outage in Boston to illus­trate the kind of mayhem a poten­tial attack could create. “We saw what hap­pened with the power grid going out. You can only imagine a cyber­at­tack having a far more reaching effect,” Keating said.

The briefing aligns with Northeastern’s com­mit­ment to meeting soci­etal needs through use-inspired research addressing global chal­lenges in secu­rity, health and sus­tain­ability. The uni­ver­sity is devel­oping inno­v­a­tive national cyberde­fense research and solu­tions through work at the Kostas Research Insti­tute, the ALERT (Aware­ness and Local­iza­tion of Explosives-Related Threats) Center – a multi-university Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­rity Center of Excel­lence – and its Insti­tute for Infor­ma­tion Assurance.

North­eastern Pres­i­dent Joseph E. Aoun was also recently appointed to the U.S. Depart­ment of Home­land Security’s Aca­d­emic Advi­sory Council.

“This whole area, more than any I’ve seen, is an area of part­ner­ships — pri­vate sector, cor­po­rate, defense — but one of the most impor­tant part­ners is acad­emia, par­tic­u­larly in Mass­a­chu­setts — and what it can bring to move these issues for­ward, give us an under­standing of the threats, and work together to pre­vent some of the threats,” Keating said.

The post Northeastern leads congressional briefing on cybersecurity appeared first on The Kostas Research Institute for Homeland Security.

The Sci­ence and Tech­nology Direc­torate has a track record of funding uni­versity research, including insti­tu­tions such as North­eastern that are among the 11 uni­ver­si­ties nation­wide des­ig­nated as DHS Cen­ters of Excel­lence.

In the letter, Aoun and his fellow pres­i­dents wrote that this funding is essen­tial to the basic research that leads to crit­ical break­throughs in national security.

“The Uni­ver­sity Pro­grams Cen­ters of Excel­lence ini­tia­tive, through which uni­ver­si­ties under­take applied research on a fast-turnaround basis, has demon­strated a sig­nif­i­cant pos­i­tive return on invest­ment,” the pres­i­dents wrote. “In con­junc­tion with industry part­ners and national lab­o­ra­to­ries, uni­ver­sity con­tri­bu­tions in devel­oping new secu­rity tech­nolo­gies — from advances in explo­sives detec­tion to devel­op­ment of under­water sen­sors to mit­i­gating the effects of nat­ural dis­as­ters — argues for addi­tional investment.”

The uni­ver­sity pres­i­dents noted that these vital research invest­ments also spark the inno­va­tion that is crit­ical to growing the nation’s economy. Steep reduc­tions in funding, they wrote, could lead to sig­nif­i­cant private-sector job losses and a weak­ening of efforts to ensure the nation’s security.

The group also expressed a shared com­mit­ment to working in part­ner­ship with Sec­re­tary Napoli­tano to pro­duce the inno­va­tion solu­tions nec­es­sary to pre­serve America’s future safety. This letter serves as the first step of what will be a year­long effort to advo­cate in Wash­ington for Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­rity sci­ence and tech­nology research funding for fiscal year 2013.

The letter comes on the heels of Aoun’s visit to Wash­ington in Sep­tember, when he met with Sec­re­tary Napoli­tano and other senior DHS offi­cials about Northeastern’s long­standing com­mit­ment to secu­rity research and the oppor­tu­ni­ties pre­sented by the university’s recently-unveiled George J. Kostas Research Insti­tute for Home­land Secu­rity. The Kostas Research Insti­tute will build on its strength in explo­sives detec­tion, cyber secu­rity, under­water robotics and national resilience.

Aoun’s lead­er­ship in forming this coali­tion aligns with Northeastern’s com­mit­ment to use-inspired research that solves global chal­lenges in secu­rity, health and sustainability.

Aoun has taken lead­er­ship roles in addressing other crit­ical higher edu­ca­tion issues on the national stage. Last Feb­ruary, he led a coali­tion of higher edu­ca­tion leaders throughout the country to urge the Obama admin­is­tra­tion to pre­serve the Perkins stu­dent loan pro­gram, which ben­e­fits more than 500,000 low-income col­lege stu­dents each year.  In 2010, Aoun led a group of col­lege pres­i­dents in urging cau­tion amid the U.S. Depart­ment of Labor’s plan to reg­u­late unpaid intern­ships, in which he argued for pro­tecting the value of expe­ri­en­tial learning — a sig­na­ture of Northeastern’s edu­ca­tional model.

The post Aoun rallies presidents to support homeland security funding appeared first on The Kostas Research Institute for Homeland Security.

“The work of the Kostas Insti­tute will be pro­foundly impor­tant to North­eastern and to our nation,” said Joseph E. Aoun, pres­i­dent of North­eastern Uni­ver­sity. “It will bring together our best minds to solve one of our greatest chal­lenges, and will leave a legacy that the Kostas family and North­eastern can be proud of.”

Kostas and his wife, Lea, joined Pres­i­dent Aoun for the cer­e­mony Thursday morning. Kostas thanked North­eastern for, in his words, making his dream a reality, and praised the researchers whose secu­rity projects aim to keep the United States a free and pro­tected nation.

“My wife and I believe America offers the best system for the devel­op­ment of human poten­tial and the best incu­bator to con­tribute to the world,” Kostas said.

Throughout the day’s events, North­eastern leaders lauded Kostas as a visionary for his com­mit­ment to estab­lishing the insti­tute, which will present North­eastern with unprece­dented oppor­tu­ni­ties to improve national secu­rity through trans­la­tional, inter­dis­ci­pli­nary research.

“You invested in us, you believed in us and our pledge is very simple: we are going to honor your con­fi­dence now and for­ever,” Pres­i­dent Aoun told Kostas.

“Dr. George Kostas is a pio­neer at the fron­tiers of sci­ence and engi­neering, and his patri­o­tism for our nation and his unwa­vering com­mit­ment to his alma mater is making all of this pos­sible,” said Sy Stern­berg, chairman of Northeastern’s Board of Trustees.

The Uni­ver­sity also announced the appoint­ment of the Kostas Institute’s codi­rec­tors, Peter Boynton and Dr. Stephen Flynn. Boynton, former com­mis­sioner of the Con­necticut Depart­ment of Emer­gency Man­age­ment and Home­land Secu­rity, and Flynn, pres­i­dent of the Center for National Policy in Wash­ington, D.C., will pro­vide strong lead­er­ship to address crit­ical home­land secu­rity chal­lenges through use-inspired, inter­dis­ci­pli­nary research under­taken at the institute.

North­eastern has a strong port­folio of research ini­tia­tives built around secu­rity. In 2008, the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­rity (DHS) selected North­eastern as one of 11 uni­ver­si­ties nation­wide for a DHS Center of Excel­lence. The $10 mil­lion grant estab­lished the Aware­ness and Local­iza­tion of Explosives-Related Threats (ALERT) center at North­eastern. Northeastern’s Marine Sci­ence Research Center in Nahant, Mass., is devel­oping robotic tech­nology to detect under­water mines and other coastal threats.

Designed in accor­dance with U.S. Depart­ment of Defense stan­dards, the 70,000-square-foot Kostas Insti­tute will give North­eastern the capacity and clear­ances to con­duct secure research in a restricted envi­ron­ment in areas ranging from cyber secu­rity to explo­sives detec­tion, mit­i­ga­tion and response to terror attacks.

The insti­tute is equipped to test new secu­rity tech­nolo­gies in a con­trolled envi­ron­ment and eval­uate its via­bility for addressing real-world secu­rity needs.

On Thursday after­noon, North­eastern researchers offered a pre­view of the inno­v­a­tive work set to begin at the insti­tute, with pre­sen­ta­tions in areas such as explo­sives detec­tion, cyber secu­rity, video tracking via unmanned drones and struc­tural testing for resilient and sus­tain­able systems.

“Our inten­tion here is to create a dif­ferent national model, a model that will allow us to cap­ture the best of what goes on in basic research from fac­ulty and stu­dents and trans­late it to crit­ical prob­lems in secu­rity here at this facility,” said Mel Bern­stein, Northeastern’s senior vice provost for research.

“This is truly a new chapter in the his­tory of North­eastern Uni­ver­sity, in which we’ll make great strides in secu­rity research, a crit­ical domain in the 21st cen­tury and one that will engage our efforts across the Uni­ver­sity,” said David Luzzi, dean of the Col­lege of Engi­neering.

The Uni­ver­sity announced last week that Luzzi would serve as exec­u­tive director of Northeastern’s Strategic Secu­rity Ini­tia­tive. Luzzi, who is con­cluding his tenure as dean, will work closely with the codi­rec­tors of the Kostas Insti­tute and with Uni­ver­sity lead­er­ship and fac­ulty to fur­ther develop the University’s secu­rity initiatives.

Research at the insti­tute will also incor­po­rate a strong inter­dis­ci­pli­nary ele­ment, given that national secu­rity solu­tions span numerous areas such as engi­neering, com­puter sci­ence, health sci­ences and the social sciences.

The codi­rec­tors will be instru­mental in leading the insti­tute to serve as a resource for industry and for gov­ern­ment at the fed­eral, state and local levels. The research activ­i­ties under­taken at the facility will be sup­ported through exter­nally funded projects involving private-public mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary research teams working on home­land security-related challenges.

Peter Boynton was most recently com­mis­sioner of the Con­necticut Depart­ment of Emer­gency Man­age­ment and Home­land Secu­rity. He brings expe­ri­ence across all levels of gov­ern­ment and major func­tional areas of home­land secu­rity. He has held lead­er­ship posi­tions in port secu­rity as a Coast Guard Cap­tain of the Port and in avi­a­tion secu­rity as a TSA fed­eral secu­rity director. He also brings national expe­ri­ence as a former director on the White House National Secu­rity Council staff and at the U.S. Depart­ment of State.

Dr. Stephen Flynn comes to North­eastern Uni­ver­sity from the Center for National Policy in Wash­ington, DC where he has been Pres­i­dent after spending a decade as a Senior Fellow for National Secu­rity Studies at the Council on For­eign Rela­tions. The author of sev­eral of the leading books and arti­cles on home­land secu­rity, he is a fre­quent expert wit­ness before U.S. Con­gress, and one of the nation’s fore­most author­i­ties on and pro­po­nents of resilience as a secu­rity and soci­etal imper­a­tive. He has served in the White House as a part of the National Secu­rity Council staff and was a part of the Obama Pres­i­den­tial Tran­si­tion Team.

The post New homeland security research institute “profoundly important to Northeastern and our nation” appeared first on The Kostas Research Institute for Homeland Security.

The post Kostas Research Institute Opening Ceremony appeared first on The Kostas Research Institute for Homeland Security.