Department of Cyber Security Engineering

Groundbreaking educator Peggy Brouse receives 2023 David J. King Award

Teresa Donnellan — Tue, 02 May 2023 15:04:35 +0000

Groundbreaking educator Peggy Brouse receives 2023 David J. King Award Teresa Donnellan Tue, 05/02/2023 - 11:04

In This Story

After helping to develop the Systems Engineering and Cyber Security Engineering programs at George Mason, Professor Peggy Brouse has received the 2023 David J. King Award.

A member of the Mason nation for over three decades, Brouse joined the university as a PhD student in Information Technology (incidentally, the first program of its kind in the U.S.). After working as a systems engineer at MITRE for nine years, she started a research lab studying requirements engineering at Mason. She notes that while she enjoys research, has published widely, and has graduated many PhD students, her love as always been “in the teaching arena.”

“When I was teaching was when I really lit up,” she recalls. So, when Dean Andrew Sage approached Brouse roughly thirty years ago about starting a Systems Engineering department at Mason, she was happy to help develop the curriculum. She helped create the Systems Engineering bachelor’s degree program and went on to create the first bachelor’s degree program in Cyber Security Engineering in the country. She currently enjoys a split appointment between the Systems Engineering and Operations Research department and the Cyber Security Engineering department.

Brouse (on right) with Provost Mark Ginsburg accepting the David J. King Award.

Not only must nominees for the David J. King award be at Mason a minimum of 20 years, but they also must meet a host of other criteria. The award, created in 2001, carries on the legacy of former Vice President for Academic Affairs David J. King and recognizes the work of an excellent teacher whose research has brought honor to Mason and whose work has enhanced the student experience at an institutional level.

“It wasn't a real dry speech; it was emotional for me,” Brouse says of her speech at the award ceremony. Several members of her family including her daughter Becky Brouse and sister, Robin West, were in attendance, along with what Brouse described as an eclectic group of colleagues from across the College of Engineering and Computing (CEC). In her speech, Brouse thanked her support system.

“You don't get anywhere without other people being a big part of that, and a lot of that is my family,” says Brouse, adding, “I've been so blessed to have just amazing colleagues.” Colleagues she mentioned include the CEC’s Director of Undergraduate Academic Advising, DaFran Ware; Director of IT and Security, Jonathan Goldman; associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and Director of the Criminal Investigations and Network Analysis Center, Jim Jones; and professor of cyber security engineering and computer science Duminda Wijesekera. In addition, she acknowledged the impactful work of Paulo Costa, a longtime colleague and the chair of the Cyber Security Engineering department, and both Becca Stevenson and Lori Stevenson, the academic advisors for the department.

Brouse with other Teacher Excellence Award winners

During the ceremony, Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs and Development Kim Eby asked Brouse to share some advice with fellow educators. In addition to treating students fairly---for example, by grading assignments anonymously---Brouse suggested an exercise that has been especially fruitful with students in her senior seminars for both systems and cyber security engineering: an end-of-semester curriculum review.

“We ask them [students], ‘What did we do that we could do better?’,” she said. Brouse has worked to change both programs several times based on feedback from this exercise. She encourages fellow faculty to remain open to student feedback. “Whatever you've done, the fact is that these students are our future. They're the ones that actually know a lot more than they're given credit for.” She adds, "That doesn't mean you have to take all their ideas, but they've come up with ideas we never would have thought of as faculty members.”

Topics

systems engineering

Systems Engineering and Operations Research Faculty

Department of Cyber Security Engineering

Award

Students shine at Mason’s Andrew P. Sage Memorial Capstone Competition

4429684e-ae8d-405e-870a-3b7aefe68162 (Martha Bushong) — Mon, 24 Apr 2023 13:57:47 +0000

Students shine at Mason’s Andrew P. Sage Memorial Capstone Competition 4429684e-ae8d-… Mon, 04/24/2023 - 09:57

In This Story

John Shortle

Songjun Luo

Lance Sherry

George Mason University’s Department of Systems Engineering and Operations Research (SEOR) held its sixth annual Andrew P. Sage Memorial Capstone Design Competition on April 17, 2023. This student-focused competition is an international assembly for the design of complex systems and a leading showcase for undergraduate design projects. These projects are from capstone design courses or from baccalaureate, honors, or design-oriented graduate theses. The event honors Andrew P. Sage, the founding dean of the Volgenau School of Engineering, a pioneer and leader in systems engineering, a prolific author, and a dedicated educator.

Event organizer Songjun Luo, associate professor from SEOR said, “The competition provided students in systems engineering and related disciplines an opportunity to showcase how they apply what they learn in solving real-world problems. As they receive feedback from judges, who are industry experts, the students learned if their solutions are practical or not. Finally, by competing with teams from other universities, they learned from each other.”

Mason teams competed with groups from UPenn, Virginia Tech, and other domestic and foreign universities. Since its inception in 2018, the competition has grown to include more teams from foreign countries. This year there were 12 international teams from four universities.

Categories included design, network security, healthcare, software security, decision support systems, device security, and transportation and logistics. Teams from the Bachelor of Science in systems engineering and cyber security engineering represented Mason at the competition.

Independent judges commented on the outstanding quality of the presentations and the skill of the student presenters and described the methodologies as top-notch.

“I’d like to thank all of the people who contributed to the success of the event,” said Luo. “It was really an effort of many people.”

The judges for reading through all the papers (~60), asking tough questions, and giving honest and constructive feedback and evaluations.

The track chairs for working through all the technical issues and ensuring the smooth running of all sessions.
Justin Amoyal, CEO and Co-Founder of Impruvon, for a very inspirational keynote speech
George Donohue for hosting a wonderful (and humorous) award ceremony.
John Shortle and Lance Sherry for their advice and guidance.
SEOR and CYSE faculty for attending the conference.
Rania and Mike (our admins.) for the around-the-clock support in the last few days, and all 260+ students for their hard work!

Mason winners from Cyber Security Engineering Tracks"The projects consider all aspects of the systems engineering design process. It is very impressive what the students accomplish in a year,” said John Shortle, SEOR department chair.

Competition Winners

Track CS 1 Offensive / Defensive Network Security

Winner - Team 2

Authors: Advay Janardhan, Ryker Gogolkiewicz, Mathew Creeks, and Hassan Al Hani

Title: Development of a Packer and Loader System for Malware Delivery.

Honorable Mention - Team 5

Authors: Celeste Huang, Chetan Kala, Faris Shaheen, Jhonn Dalton Cardozo, Mohammad Alessa and Sahil Khan

Title: OpenStack Cloud Penetration Testing.

Track CS2 Risk and Vulnerability Assessment Awards

Best paper award: Chat Application Analysis: Custom Tooling and Workflow

Team members: Sruthi Chavali, Rand Alaqeel, Mohamed Alfalasi, and Udhayvir Goraya

Honorable Mention: Mitigation Roadmap for Supply Chain Attacks

Team members: Johnathan Hy, Daniel Behrooz, Sahil Gulati, and Zain Shah

Track CS 3 Cyber-physical Systems

Best paper: Team 4, ‘Decentralized Privacy-Preservation Misbehavior Detection in Vehicular Networks Using Deep Learning’

Honorable mention: Team 2, ‘Design and Testing of a Secure Asset Tracking System’

Track CS 4 Software Security

Best paper: Team 4 (Mitigating Security Risks in the Software Supply Chain: A Continuous Inspection Framework within Azure)

Track CS 5 Hardware Security

Winner – Team 1

Authors: Casey Cho, Pacey Querubin, Michael Long, Uthra Muthukumaran, Dian Rajic, and Kelson Schira

Title: Detecting Unmanned Aircraft Systems on a Broadband Network and Long-Term Evolution

Honorable Mention – Team 3

Authors: Nathaniel Lovgren, Angelina Lee, Hashim Cheema, Brandon Avila, Jack Knobloch, and Lucas Artero

Title: Identifying Friendly Forces in the Battlefield

Track CS 6 Cyber-threat Intelligence

Best Paper Winner: Team 3

Authors: Rishi Shyamala, Luna Baral, Yonel Beaulieu, Haya Saeed, and Mosha Kamran

Title: Using Machine Learning to Perform Anomaly Detection

Honorable Mention: Team 2

Authors: Paulina Keifer, Simran Chhatwal, Hamza Aljaidi, Tashfin Hassan, Joycelyn Joo, and Nathaniel Kim

Title: ELK Stack Security Enhancement with Log Anomaly Detection and Analysis

Track SE 1 and 2 System Design

Best paper: Team 4

Design of a Portable and Renewable EV Battery Charging System (PREVBCS)

Authors: Michael Riggi, Amir Abrari, Nancy Reyes, and Jojo Taylor

Track SE 3 and 4 Industrial Applications

Most Promising Team. Team 6 for A Design of a Mason Recovery System to Meet Net Zero Pledge

Authors: Dominic Galarza, Nick Baxter, Christian Artz, and Aaron Bergantinos

Track SE 6 Software Tools and Platform

Best paper: Team 2

Authors: Joseph Privitera, Mikeal Lockard, and Ovidio Castillo

Title: Design of a Climate Related Financial Risk Tool for Non-Profits and Small Businesses

Topics

Department of Cyber Security Engineering

Systems Engineering and Operations Research

Systems Engineering and cyber security engineering represent Mason at Andrew Sage Competition

4429684e-ae8d-405e-870a-3b7aefe68162 (Martha Bushong) — Mon, 03 May 2021 23:29:43 +0000

Systems Engineering and cyber security engineering represent Mason at Andrew Sage Competition 4429684e-ae8d-… Mon, 05/03/2021 - 19:29

Mason’s Department of Systems Engineering and Operations Research (SEOR) held its fourth annual Andrew P. Sage Memorial Capstone Design Competition on April 26.

This student-focused competition is an international assembly for the design of complex systems and a leading showcase for undergraduate design projects. These projects are from our capstone design courses or from baccalaureate, honors, or design-oriented graduate theses.

Our teams competed with groups from the United States Military Academy at West Point, University of Pennsylvania, James Madison University, Virginia Tech, and the College of Engineering and Computing's SEOR department. Categories included design, network security, healthcare, software security, decision support systems, device security, and transportation and logistics.

Teams from the Bachelor of Science in systems engineering and cyber security engineering represented Mason at the competition.

The event honors Andrew P. Sage, the founding dean of the Volgenau School, a pioneer and leader in systems engineering, a prolific author, and a dedicated educator.

Mason Winners

Track 1: Cybersecurity

Cyber Security Engineering

Michael Fialk, Yun Zhao, Chad Constantine, Harsh Cheema, Tiffany Huynh

Track #2: Network Security

Cyber Security Engineering

Using Elastic Cloud to Identify, Analyze, and Generate Alerts for Anomalous Network Traffic

Sanjeet Bagga, Wyatt Child, Cameron Lawrence, John Leach, Kevin Liu and Joseph Walter

Track 3: Software Security

Cyber Security Engineering

Purple Team Assessment of an Industrial Control System Secured by the Dragos Platform

Andrew Smith, Kyle Simmons, Marissa Costa, Natalie Sebastian, Santiago Taboada Patino, and Zaine Wilson

Track 7: Industry Applications

Systems Engineering and Operations Research

Design of a Vertiport Traffic Flow Management System

Furat Allawi, Parul Chhabra, Betelhem Kebede, and Toavina Ratolojanahary

Track 8: Social Engineering

Systems Engineering and Operations Research

Design of a Decision Support Tool for Developing EV Fleet Transition

Evan Anderson, Khiem Duong, Rebecca Quintero, and Hein Naing

Best MS Paper

Systems Engineering and Operations Research

Forecasting Models for Predicting Power Demand

Maura Kaminow, Ruggieri Guillaume, Mary Taylor, and David Todd

Honorable Mentions

Track 1: Cybersecurity

Cyber Security Engineering

Cyber Hygiene Scoring Model

David Nicholson, Attar Singh, Andres Ramos, Stephen Morrison, Sara Eldabaa, and Jason Corona

Track #2: Network Security

Cyber Security Engineering

Vibrational Comms Project (Weirding Module)

Darby Hopkins, Milcah Barretto, Matt Sipes and Stephen Underwood

Vibrational Comms Project (Weirding Module)

Track 3: Software Security

Cyber Security Engineering

Agile Video Integrity

Christian Tanous, Ethan Lannon, Saleh Alzahrani, Ali Latif, and Shiny Chekuri

Track 9: Systems & Platforms

Cyber Security Engineering

Server Creation for a Distributed Education Platform

Victor Corja, Shaikh Alsharqi, Diana Chong, Omar Rahim, and Mackenzie Tottle

Topics

Department of Cyber Security Engineering

Systems Engineering and Operations Research

Mason Engineering BS in cyber security engineering earns ABET accreditation

Anonymous — Tue, 19 Jan 2021 14:45:18 +0000

Mason Engineering BS in cyber security engineering earns ABET accreditation Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 01/19/2021 - 09:45

Mason Engineering’s bachelor’s degree program in cyber security engineering has been accredited by the Engineering Accreditation Commission of ABET, the global accreditor of college and university programs in applied and natural science, computing, engineering, and engineering technology.  

ABET accreditation assures that programs meet standards to produce graduates ready to enter critical technical fields that are leading the way in innovation and emerging technologies and anticipating the welfare and safety needs of the public.

“ABET accreditation is important to all engineering programs. The BS in cyber security engineering being the first ABET-accredited cyber security engineering program, and the first accredited with the new cyber security program criteria, is an important achievement for the new Volgenau Department of Cyber Security Engineering, but it is only the beginning,” says Peggy Brouse, professor and associate chair for the department. “The department is launching the new MS CYSE degree this spring semester. In addition, we are in a great position to extend research that we already have with the National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security. We are excited for the future.”

Students pursuing a BS in cybersecurity engineering learn from distinguished faculty in the classroom and gain hands-on experience through projects and a year-long senior design capstone where faculty, students, and even alumni come together to tackle real-world problems.

Alumnus turned senior design capstone advisor Matthew Wilkes, BS cyber security engineering ’18, says of the students he has mentored, “I want to ensure they’re encouraged to be successful in both their project and beyond. I won’t make it easy for them because if it was easy every student could do it.” Wilkes was among the first students to graduate from the program.

“Any student who graduates from Mason with a degree in cyber security engineering has very high expectations,” says Wilkes.

Students praise the program and the opportunities that Mason offers. “Mason’s cybersecurity program has helped me build a solid base of practice and theory to fuel extracurricular study,” says cyber security engineering student Zaine Wilson. “Professors Tom Winston, Jim Jones, Mohamed Gebril, and all the other professors in the department, you won't find a group of more caring, inspiring, and wise mentors anywhere else.”

ABET’s voluntary peer-review process is highly respected because it adds critical value to academic programs in the technical disciplines, where quality, precision, and safety are of the utmost importance.

Topics

Cyber Security

Cybersecurity

Accreditation

Department of Cyber Security Engineering