Jonathan Werner
B.S., Bioinformatics and Computational Biology
Summa Cum Laude
Hometown: Glen Burnie, Maryland
Plans: Ph.D., Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory

"The Meyerhoff program taught me how to be a scholar and a life-long learner, and the professors and staff here at UMBC taught me how to use my natural curiosity and intellect to be successful in my chosen career path."

Jonathan Werner, M26, has been conducting research with Rachel Brewster, professor of biological sciences, since his freshman year. By studying zebrafish development, “we aim to provide the basic research necessary for the future clinical treatment of neural tube birth defects, the most common birth defects in humans,” he says.

Werner has co-authored two papers based on research in Brewster’s lab and is currently working on his first first-author publication. The College of Natural and Mathematical Sciences recognized his efforts with the Faculty Award for Excellence. He is also a member of the academic honor society Phi Beta Kappa.

Werner was recently selected as a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow. The fellowship provides three years of funding for his graduate studies, which he will pursue at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York state. Werner intends to blend his interests in experimental and computational biology in his Ph.D. work, a goal the fellowship will facilitate.

As a Meyerhoff Scholar and the Meyerhoff Student Council President, Werner is grateful to the Meyerhoff community for supporting his success and connecting him with exciting opportunities. “While here at UMBC, I have received phenomenal support in both my academic and research pursuits,” he says.

Portrait by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

Article originally appeared on UMBC News website.

Big Data, Security and Privacy

Prof. Bhavani Thuraisingham, University of Texas at Dallas
11:00-12:00 Wednesday, 16 May 2018, ITE 459, UMBC

The collection, storage, manipulation and retention of massive amounts of data have resulted in serious security and privacy considerations. Various regulations are being proposed to handle big data so that the privacy of the individuals is not violated. For example, even if personally identifiable information is removed from the data, when data is combined with other data, an individual can be identified. This is essentially the inference and aggregation problem that data security researchers have been exploring for the past four decades. This problem is exacerbated with the management of big data as different sources of data now exist that are related to various individuals.

While collecting massive amounts of data causes security and privacy concerns, big data analytics applications in cyber security is exploding. For example, an organization can outsource activities such as identity management, email filtering and intrusion detection to the cloud. This is because massive amounts of data are being collected for such applications and this data has to be analyzed. The question is, how can the developments in big data management and analytics techniques be used to solve security problems? These problems include malware detection, insider threat detection, and intrusion detection.

To address the challenges of big data security and privacy as well as big data analytics for cyber security applications, we organized a workshop sponsored by the National Science Foundation in September 2014 and presented the results in 2015 at an inter-agency workshop in Washington DC. Since then several developments have been reported on big data security and privacy as well as on big data analytics of cyber security. This presenting will summarize the findings of the workshop and discuss the developments and directions.

Dr. Bhavani Thuraisingham is the Louis A. Beecherl, Jr. Distinguished Professor in the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science at The University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) and the Executive Director of UTD’s Cyber Security Research and Education Institute since October 2004. She is also a Senior Research Fellow at Kings College, University of London (2015-2018) and a New America Cyber Security Policy Fellow (2017-2018). Her current research is on integrating cyber security and data science. Prior to joining UTD she worked at the MITRE Corporation for 16 years including a three-year stint as a Program Director at the NSF. She initiated the Data and Applications Security program at NSF and was a member of the Cyber Trust theme. While at MITRE she was a department head and was also a technical advisor to the DoD, the NSA, the CIA, and the IRS. Prior to that, she worked for the commercial industry for six years including at Honeywell, Inc. She is the recipient of numerous awards including the IEEE CS 1997 Technical Achievement Award, the IEEE ISI 2010 Research Leadership Award, ACM SIGSAC 2010 Outstanding Contributions Award, SDPS 2012 Transformative Achievement Gold Medal, 2013 IBM Faculty Award, ACM CODASPY 2017 Innovative and Lasting Research Contributions Award, IEEE CS Services Computing 2017 Research Innovation Award, and Dallas Business Journal 2017 Women in Technology Award. She is a 2003 Fellow of the IEEE and the AAAS and a 2005 Fellow of the British Computer Society. She has published over 120 journal articles, 250 conference papers, 15 books, has delivered over 130 keynote and featured addresses, and is the inventor of six US patents. She has chaired/co-chaired top tier conferences including the Women in Cyber Security (WiCyS) 2016, ACM CCS 2017, and is serving as the Program co-Chair for IEEE ICDM 2018. She also delivered a featured address at the Women in Data Science (WiDS) conference in 2018. She received her PhD at the University of Wales, Swansea, UK, and the earned higher doctorate (D. Eng) from the University of Bristol, England, UK for her published research in secure data management.

The post talk: Big Data, Security and Privacy, 11am Wed 5/16 appeared first on Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering.

Big Data, Security and Privacy

Prof. Bhavani Thuraisingham, University of Texas at Dallas
11:00-12:00 Wednesday, 16 May 2018, ITE 459, UMBC

The collection, storage, manipulation and retention of massive amounts of data have resulted in serious security and privacy considerations. Various regulations are being proposed to handle big data so that the privacy of the individuals is not violated. For example, even if personally identifiable information is removed from the data, when data is combined with other data, an individual can be identified. This is essentially the inference and aggregation problem that data security researchers have been exploring for the past four decades. This problem is exacerbated with the management of big data as different sources of data now exist that are related to various individuals.

While collecting massive amounts of data causes security and privacy concerns, big data analytics applications in cyber security is exploding. For example, an organization can outsource activities such as identity management, email filtering and intrusion detection to the cloud. This is because massive amounts of data are being collected for such applications and this data has to be analyzed. The question is, how can the developments in big data management and analytics techniques be used to solve security problems? These problems include malware detection, insider threat detection, and intrusion detection.

To address the challenges of big data security and privacy as well as big data analytics for cyber security applications, we organized a workshop sponsored by the National Science Foundation in September 2014 and presented the results in 2015 at an inter-agency workshop in Washington DC. Since then several developments have been reported on big data security and privacy as well as on big data analytics of cyber security. This presenting will summarize the findings of the workshop and discuss the developments and directions.

Dr. Bhavani Thuraisingham is the Louis A. Beecherl, Jr. Distinguished Professor in the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science at The University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) and the Executive Director of UTD’s Cyber Security Research and Education Institute since October 2004. She is also a Senior Research Fellow at Kings College, University of London (2015-2018) and a New America Cyber Security Policy Fellow (2017-2018). Her current research is on integrating cyber security and data science. Prior to joining UTD she worked at the MITRE Corporation for 16 years including a three-year stint as a Program Director at the NSF. She initiated the Data and Applications Security program at NSF and was a member of the Cyber Trust theme. While at MITRE she was a department head and was also a technical advisor to the DoD, the NSA, the CIA, and the IRS. Prior to that, she worked for the commercial industry for six years including at Honeywell, Inc. She is the recipient of numerous awards including the IEEE CS 1997 Technical Achievement Award, the IEEE ISI 2010 Research Leadership Award, ACM SIGSAC 2010 Outstanding Contributions Award, SDPS 2012 Transformative Achievement Gold Medal, 2013 IBM Faculty Award, ACM CODASPY 2017 Innovative and Lasting Research Contributions Award, IEEE CS Services Computing 2017 Research Innovation Award, and Dallas Business Journal 2017 Women in Technology Award. She is a 2003 Fellow of the IEEE and the AAAS and a 2005 Fellow of the British Computer Society. She has published over 120 journal articles, 250 conference papers, 15 books, has delivered over 130 keynote and featured addresses, and is the inventor of six US patents. She has chaired/co-chaired top tier conferences including the Women in Cyber Security (WiCyS) 2016, ACM CCS 2017, and is serving as the Program co-Chair for IEEE ICDM 2018. She also delivered a featured address at the Women in Data Science (WiDS) conference in 2018. She received her PhD at the University of Wales, Swansea, UK, and the earned higher doctorate (D. Eng) from the University of Bristol, England, UK for her published research in secure data management.

The post talk: Big Data, Security and Privacy, 11am Wed 5/16 appeared first on Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering.

Students trying to Move to California, but Have an Apartment with Lease through September 1^st.

Looking for an off-campus apartment that’s still close enough for convenience? As in, only 5 minutes off-campus (and on the Arbutus bus route!), but so much quieter than the dorms that you’ll wonder if you even have neighbors? Then Mount Ridge is for you!

The apartment is the upper floor of a duplex with 3 bedrooms, 1 full bath, fully furnished kitchen, and living room. There is an in-suite laundry washing machine and drier! We are looking to convey most of the furnishings (like Ikea couches, a folding table, office desks, ect), but all of those are negotiable.

We’ve lived here for 4 years and have never had any pest problems. The maintenance people are quick to respond to problems and are quite friendly.

This apartment is available now and we’re looking to transfer it by the end of May, 2018 (this month!!).

Monthly cost is $1367 + utilities.

Please contact Alexis Ramsey at 301-305-4492 (texting is better as my phone chooses, sporadically, when to receive calls or voicemails) for questions or to set up a time to view.