Assoc. Prof. Madhusanka Liyanage

Associate Professor / Ad Astra Fellow and Director of Graduate Research, School of Computer Science, University College Dublin, Ireland

Madhusanka Liyanage is an Assistant Professor/Ad Astra Fellow and Director of Graduate Research at University College Dublin, Ireland. He is also a Docent/Adjunct Professor at the University of Oulu, Finland, the University of Ruhuna, Sri Lanka, and the University of Sri Jarawardhenepura, Sri Lanka. He holds a Doctor of Technology degree from the University of Oulu, Finland (2016) and prestigious fellowships during 2018-2020. Madhusanka has been a Visiting Research Fellow at various renowned institutions globally. He received the "2020 IEEE ComSoc Outstanding Young Researcher" award and was ranked among the World's Top 2% of Scientists in 2021 and 2022. He has over 150+ publications, authored books, edited books, and two patents. Additionally, he serves as an expert consultant at European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) and has secured over 5 Million Euro research funding. Currently, he leads three large EU H2020/Horizon Europe projects and is the director of the Netslab team at University College Dublin, Ireland. More info: www.madhusanka.com 

Prof. Dan Kilper

Director of the CONNECT Centre, Ireland

Professor Dan Kilper is the Director of the CONNECT Centre, and Principal Investigator. He is Professor of Future Communication Networks in the School of Engineering in Trinity College Dublin.

Professor Kilper received his PhD in physics from the University of Michigan in 1996. From 2000 to 2013, he was a member of the technical staff at Bell Labs.  He is a senior member of IEEE, a topical area editor for the IEEE Transactions on Green Communications and Networking (TGCN) and chairs the optics working group in the IEEE International Network Generations Roadmap. He was recognized as a 2019 NIST Communications Technology Lab Innovator and holds eleven issued patents and authored six book chapters and more than one hundred sixty-seven peer-reviewed publications. His research is aimed at solving fundamental and real-world problems in communication networks in order to create a faster, more affordable, and energy efficient Internet, addressing interdisciplinary challenges for smart cities, sustainability, and digital equity.

Professor Kilper comes to CONNECT from the University of Arizonawhere he held a research professorship in the College of Optical Sciences, and a joint appointment in Electrical and Computer Engineering. He also holds an adjunct faculty position in the Data Science Institute at Columbia University, where he is a co-PI on the COSMOS advanced wireless testbed. He was lead PI on the founding project of SFI’s US-Ireland Research and Development Partnership and has served in leadership positions in multiple international university-industry research centres including participating in CONNECT’s precursor, CTVR, while he was at Bell Labs.

Dr Vera Stavroulaki

Dr Julian Thomas (Friedrich-Alexander-Universität)

Julian Thomas is a PhD student in cryptography at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg in Germany, and He is working on the European Confidential 6G project. His research interested are in the formalizations and automatication of privacy-enhancing cryptographic primitives as well as post-quantum cryptography.

Abstract: Message authentication codes are a fundamental symmetric key primitive to ensure authenticity and integrity. We present the first framework to comprehensively and automatically generate and analyze secure deterministic message authentication codes based on pseudorandom functions.

 Dr Luis Muñoz-González (Telefonica)

Dr Luis Muñoz-González is a senior research scientist at Telefónica Research in Barcelona, Spain. Before that, he worked as a research associate in the Department of Computing at Imperial College London, being part of the Resilient Information Systems Security (RISS) group. Dr Muñoz-González obtained a PhD on machine learning at University Carlos III of Madrid, Spain. His PhD thesis on Gaussian Process models for nonstationary regression was recognized with the Extraordinary Doctorate Award. His current research interests lie at the intersection of machine learning and cyber security, including the security of machine learning, federated learning, and machine learning for cyber security.

Abstract: At training time, Federated Learning algorithms can be vulnerable to data and model poisoning attacks, where attackers can manipulate the parameters of the global model to produce indiscriminate or targeted errors when the model is deployed. In this talk we present, adaptive federated averaging, a technique for mitigating the effect of such attacks and detect the malicious participants trying to compromise a federated learning task, including a robust aggregation algorithm capable of ignoring malicious updates and a Hidden Markov Model to model the participants’ behaviour during training.

Assoc. Prof. Sandra Scott-Hayward (Queen's University Belfast)

Sandra Scott-Hayward is an Associate Professor with the School of Electronics, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and a Member of the Centre for Secure Information Technologies at Queen’s University Belfast (QUB). She began her career in industry and became a Chartered Engineer in 2006. Since joining academia, she has contributed security designs and solutions for softwarized networks based on her research on network security architectures and security functions for emerging networks, specifically considering threat detection and protection mechanisms in programmable networks. She received Outstanding Technical Contributor and Outstanding Leadership awards from the Open Networking Foundation in 2015 and 2016, respectively, having been elected and serving as the Vice-Chair of the ONF Security Working Group from 2015 to 2017. Dr. Scott-Hayward serves on the editorial board for IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management, and IEEE Transactions on Machine Learning in Communications and Networking. She is Vice-Chair of the IEEE NetSoft Steering Committee. She is Director of the QUB Academic Centre of Excellence in Cyber Security Education (ACE-CSE), co-lead of the QUB Leverhulme Interdisciplinary Network on Algorithmic Solutions (LINAS) doctoral training programme, and a Polymath Fellow of the Global Fellowship Initiative at the Geneva Centre for Security Policy (GCSP) from 2021 to 2023. With LINAS and GCSP, she explores the impact of ML and AI technologies on security and society.

Abstract: Space-air-ground integrated networks (SAGINs) extend terrestrial network infrastructure to non-ter­restrial networks (NTNs), integrating satellite and unmanned aerial vehicle communications, high-altitude platforms, and space systems. These integrated networks can provide connectivity to remote locations, enhance service delivery, and support new ventures. NTN integration is an ambitious mission in 3GPP to extend the Internet to sky and outer space. Machine learning (ML) and artificial intelli­gence (AI) solutions are being explored to advance cooperative and autonomous behaviour, self-organisation, and optimisation in SAGINs with associated security challenges. In this talk, we will explore the security, intelligence, and programmable aspects of SAGIN.

Shush Liu (Nokia)

Engin Zydan (CTTC)

Konstantinos Lessis & Christina Karousatou

Madhusanka Liyanage