The University of North Texas' Ram Dantu (pronounced "Dan-Tu") is director of the UNT Center for Information and Computer Security and researches Voice over IP (VoIP) security. This research has led to a number of new companies: Sipera Systems, VoIP shield Systems, Kagoor Networks (which was acquired by Juniper Networks, a leading networking company with 2014 revenues nearly $5B) and Kayote Networks.
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Congratulations to Garima Bajwa on winning the Toulouse Graduate School’s Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition held on November 21st at UNT! In this competition, nine graduate students had three minutes to explain their research and dissertation to a general audience. Garima presented her thesis "Neuro-Sign: NOT Just another Vital Sign".

3MT is not an exercise in trivializing or ’dumbing-down’ research, but challenges students to consolidate their ideas and research discoveries so they can be presented concisely to a non-specialist audience. The first 3MT competition was held in Australia at the University of Queensland in 2008. More than 200 universities worldwide now host competitions, including 40 in the U.S.

Garima won the first prize of $3,000 and will represent UNT at the regional competition, which is scheduled for the Southern Council of Graduate Schools annual conference in February. She is a Ph.D. student of Dr. Ram Dantu.

Congressman Michael C. Burgess, M.D., hosted a Cyber-Security Roundtable on August 19, 2015 at Discovery Park. After UNT President Dr. Neal Smatresk welcomed everyone, Congressman Burgess gave his opening remarks. Dr. Dantu, CSE Professor and Director of the UNT Center for Information and Computer Security, participated on a Cyber-Security Panel with David Wagner, President of Entrust Datacard; Stephen Bohanon, Founder, Chief Strategy and Sales Officer for Alkami Technology, Inc.

The panel was moderated by Larry Parker, Owner of the Denton Depot. James Elliott, Assistant Regional Director of the Southwest Region of the Federal Trade Commission also made remarks before a question and answer session with the audience. Read more about this event in this Denton Record-Chronicle article .

On March 27, the UNT Center for Information and Computer Security hosted a Workshop on Hot Topics in Networking and Security (HoNeST) at Ericsson, Inc. in Plano, TX. Several experts in the field of cybersecurity talked to an audience of more than 220 people. Seventy percent of the audience was from industry, which included managers, directors, and software developers. More than 50 companies were represented at the event. Other attendees included faculty from community colleges (more than 10 represented), faculty from universities and students.

UNT CSE Chair Dr. Barrett Bryant introduced the morning Keynote Speaker Jeremy Epstein, Program Director at the National Science Foundation, who spoke on "Voting Security and Risk Management." During lunch, UNT Graduate Students shared their research with attendees with their poster presentations. Following lunch, Dr. Dantu introduced the afternoon Keynote Speaker Dr. Henning Schulzrinne, Professor at Columbia University and Chief Technical Officer at the FCC. Dr. Schlzrinne’s speech was "Insanity Is—Or How Can We Finally Make Progress on Securing our Computing Infrastructure?"

CSE Professor Dr. Dantu is the Director of the UNT Network Security Lab. He was the Conference and Program Chair. CSE Principal Lecturer David Keathly was the Proceedings and Publicity Chair. Both Dr. Dantu and Mr. Keathly were on the Steering Committee, along with CSE Lecturer Dr. Mark Thompson. This event was sponsored by the UNT Department of Computer Science and Engineering; the National Convergence Technology Center, an NSF National Center hosted at Collin College; Ericsson; and Master Computing in Denton. A media gallery page with pictures of the conference is here.

Congratulations to Shanti Thiyagaraja on winning the Spirit of Innovation Competition, sponsored by the US India Chamber of Commerce DFW (USICOC), on December 4, 2014. Shanti is a CSE graduate student in Dr. Ram Dantu’s Network Security Lab. Shanti won $5,000 for her presentation on "Smart Phone Monitoring of Second Heart Sound Split." Students from local universities, including Southern Methodist University (SMU), the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA), the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) and the University of North Texas, participated in the competition.

This is the second year that the USICOC has hosted the Spirit of Innovation Competition. This event brings together students from local universities and gives them the opportunity to showcase their innovative business ideas. This year 29 submissions were reviewed by a panel of judges which included professors from all four universities, venture capitalists and management from Texas Instruments and other companies. Eight finalists were selected to present their concepts to the judging panel live at Texas Instruments. The winners and more information are included in this USICOC press release.

The Department of Computer Science and Engineering received a donation of equipment from L-3 Mission Integration, a prime contractor in aerospace systems and national security solutions. L-3 donated Cisco servers to the Network Security Teaching Lab and Dell servers for our BA in Information Technology program. Based in Greenville, Texas, L-3 Mission Integration is a division of L-3 Communications, which is the sixth largest defense company in the United States and is headquartered in New York City. Thanks to L-3 for their donation to our CSE Department!

Satyajeet Nimgaonkar

UNT IA/CD student Satyajeet Nimgaonkar graduated with his PhD in computer science in August 2014. He is attached to the department of Computer Science and Engineering and his major professor is Dr. Mahadevan Gomathisankaran. His dissertation title was "Secure and Energy Efficient Execution Frameworks Using Virtualization and Light-Weight Cryptographic Components".

Mohamed Fazeen

UNT IA/CD student Mohamed Fazeen Mohamed Issadeen defended his dissertation and will be graduated with his PhD in computer science in December 2014. He is attached to the department of Computer Science and Engineering and his major professor is Dr. Ram Dantu. His dissertation title was "Modeling and Analysis of Intentional and Unintentional Security Vulnerabilities in a Mobile Platform ".

The UNT Kuehne Speaker Series on National Security was established in 2013 to showcase UNT’s nationally and internationally recognized programs and faculty engaged in issues related to national and human security. The series was established thanks to generous support from UNT alumnus Ernie Kuehne (’66), an attorney and president and board chairman of Kuehne Oil Co.

2014-15 Season Outlook  - General Keith B. Alexander (November 5, 2014 )

Dr. Ram Dantu attended the TIA'2014 Network of the Future conference on June 3rd to 5th, 2014 at Dallas, TX and presented under the "Big Data & Privacy" track. His topic of the day was "The Connected Car". Part of his discussion was described as follows; "Most automakers are developing multimedia for infotainment, mobile device support and such functions as touch and voice recognition, radar, video, way-finding, real-time diagnostics and online services. Vehicle automation will find its apex in autonomous driving cars that integrate sensory input from the environment, other vehicles and the wireless carrier infrastructure. "

Mohamed Fazeen presented the following paper at the conference and he received a $500 travel grant from CENG Graduate Student Travel Funds for the travel;
Mohamed Fazeen, Garima Bajwa, Ram Dantu, “Context-Aware Multimedia Encryption in Mobile Platforms,” Cyber and Information Security Research (CISR '14), Oak Ridge, Tennessee, USA, April 2014.

Dr. Ram Dantu, and his students Garima Bajwa and, Shanti Thiyagaraja were also attended the conference.

Congratulations to the CSE Cyber Defense Team on their third place finish in the Southwest Regional Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (CCDC), on March 8 and 9 in San Antonio, TX. Dr. Mahadevan Gomathisankaran is the faculty mentor for the team. For more information see this Trusted Secure Systems Lab page. The team was featured in this news video about the competition.

Computer Science and Engineering Cyber Defense Team passed the qualifying round on February 1 and became one of only four teams to compete in the Southwest Regional Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (CCDC), on March 8 and 9 in San Antonio, TX. Dr. Mahadevan Gomathisankaran is the faculty mentor for the team.

(Picture: Back row (L-R): Alex Breinig, Chad Saye, Philip Becker, Jimi Mills; Front row (L-R): Tawfiq Shah, Junkai Sun, Dr. Mahadevan Gomathisankaran, Srujan Kotikela, Kevin Ray. Two members missing are Patrick Kamongi and Tim Page.)