Dr. M. Hadi Amini is currently an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the Knight Foundation School of Computing and Information Sciences (KFSCIS) at Florida International University (FIU), Miami, Florida, since August 2019. Prior to that, he received his Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering from Carnegie Mellon University (2019), Doctor of Engineering in computer science and technology from Sun Yat-sen University (2018), M.Sc. in electrical and computer engineering from Carnegie Mellon University (2015), M.Sc. in electrical engineering from Tabriat Modares University (2013), and B.Sc. in electrical engineering from Sharif University of Technology (2011). He conducts research in federated learning, distributed optimization and learning algorithms, and their applications in cyber-physical systems, cybersecurity, transportation networks, and critical infrastructures resilience. He has published over 100 journal and conference papers, and edited/authored 9 books. He is the recipient of the U.S. DHS Science and Technology Directorate, Scientific Leadership Award (2023-2028), Best Paper Award from “2019 IEEE Conference on Computational Science & Computational Intelligence”, 2021 Best Journal Paper Award from “Springer Nature Operations Research Forum Journal”, 2024 “FIU Top Scholar Award, Research and Creative Activities, Junior Faculty with Significant Grants (Sciences)”, 2023 FIU “Faculty Senate Excellence in Teaching Award”, Excellence in Teaching Award from FIU KFSCIS in 2020, and the best reviewer award from four IEEE Transactions. His publications in peer-reviewed journals with high impact factor and competitive conferences have received multiple best journal/conference paper awards and have been cited over 5650 times (with an h-index of 38) as of April 2024.
Dr. Kemal Akkaya is a full professor in the School of Computer and Information Sciences at Florida International University (FIU). He received his PhD in Computer Science from University of Maryland Baltimore County in 2005 and joined the department of Computer Science at Southern Illinois University (SIU) as an assistant professor. Dr. Akkaya was an associate professor at SIU from 2011 to 2014. He was also a visiting professor at The George Washington University in Fall 2013, a Faculty Fellow at Airforce Research Lab in Summer 2020 and visiting faculty at University of Florida Nelms Institute of Connected World in 2021. Dr. Akkaya leads the Advanced Wireless and Security Lab (ADWISE) in the ECE Department. He is also acting as the Research Director for the FIU’s Emerging Preeminent Program in Cybersecurity, which is a university wide interdisciplinary program. His current research interests include security and privacy, internet-of-things, and cyber-physical systems. His research was funded by many agencies and industries including NSF, DoE, AFRL, DHS, NSA, INL, Cisco, and TrendMicro. Dr. Akkaya is a Fellow of IEEE. He is the associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Security and Forensics journal, area editor of Elsevier Adhoc Network and Computer Networks Journals and serves on the editorial board of IEEE Communication Surveys and Tutorials and Sensor Journals. Dr. Akkaya was the editor-in-chief of Springer Nature Computer Science journal (2022-2023), the General Chair of IEEE LCN 2018, General Co-chair of IEEE NOMS 2023, and TPC Chair for IEEE ICC Smart Grid Communications in 2019. He has served as the guest editor for many journals and in the OC/TPC of many leading network/security conferences including IEEE ICC, Globecom, INFOCOM, LCN, WCNC, ICNP and ACM WiSec. He has published around 300 papers in peer-reviewed journal and conferences with more than 19,000 citations and google h-index of 57. He was listed among the top 2% scientists in the world according to a Stanford University study in 2020-22. Dr. Akkaya received FIU Faculty Senate Excellence in Research Award, FIU College of Engineering and Computing Research Award both in 2020 and FIU Top Scholar Award in 2023. He has also received “Top Cited” article award from Elsevier in 2010. He also holds 9 patents.
Dr. Mashrur “Ronnie” Chowdhury is the Eugene Douglas Mays Chair of Transportation in the Glenn Department of Civil Engineering at Clemson University. He serves as the Founding Director of multiple significant research centers: the USDOT UTC National Center for Transportation Cybersecurity and Resiliency (TraCR) and the USDOT UTC Center for Connected Multimodal Mobility (C2M2). Additionally, Dr. Chowdhury is the Co-Associate Director of the USDOT UTC Center for Regional and Rural Connected Communities (CR2C2) and the Co-Director of the Complex Systems, Analytics and Visualization Institute (CSAVI). He has co-authored two books and edited two others, all focusing on intelligent transportation systems.
