Collaboration

This page represents some of the faculty and staff at FSU that are actively involved in research, teaching, and administration related to cybersecurity.  The current group represents a significant body of expertise, knowledge, and experience with funded research, teaching and the administration of cybersecurity. We expect that the group will continue to expand.

College of Arts and Sciences Computer Science Department

The Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences has allocated $100,000 for establishing the Laboratory for Security and Assurance in IT (SAIT) in 1998. The Harris Corporation also has donated $100,000 (the SAIT Foundation), and Raytheon donated $30,000. Since then, the Computer Science Department has attracted nearly $6 Million in research funding from the Federal Government agencies including the National Science Foundation, Department of Defense, Army Research Office, National Institute of Justice, and Florida State government agencies such as Department of State and Department of Revenue, and from companies in the private sector such as Raytheon, Datamaxx, and Microsoft.

Furthermore the Computer Science Department conducts research in cyber and cyberphysical systems with NSA and Raytheon, developing architectures, technologies and tools for power control systems used on naval warships through the Office of Naval Research, as well as developing online educational tools for cybersecurity education for port authority personnel. Currently, the Center for Emergency Management and Homeland Security Program has been established at FSU’s Computer Science Department. The Center provided “table top” cybersecurity exercises for the Office of the Governor.

Twelve members of the faculty in the department of Computer Science participate in the research track in security, Dr. S. Aggarwal, Dr. M. Burmester, Dr. X. Duan, Dr. S. Haiduc, Dr. X. Liu, Dr. M. Mascagni, Dr. G. Tyson, Dr. R. van Engelen, Dr. A. Wang, Dr. Z. Wang, Dr. Z. Zhang, and Dr. P. Zhao. Below are brief sketches of leading professors.

Mike Burmester is Professor at the Department of Computer Science, and Director of the Center for Security and Assurance in IT (C-SAIT), which is responsible for making Florida State University a NSA/DHA Center of Academic Excellence in IA education (CAEIAE) and Research (CAR-R). Mike’s research interests are information assurance, and in particular cryptography, privacy/anonymity, pervasive/ubiquitous systems, lightweight cryptographic applications, RFIDs and sensor applications, trust management and group key exchange. Recent work focuses on modularity and composability for secure lightweight cryptographic applications.

Xiuwen Liu is Professor at the Department of Computer Science. His research interests include image analysis for high throughput quantitative biology, spatial and temporal organization modeling of chromatin fibers, pattern analysis and classification for nucleosome positioning, in addition to three dimensional representations for computer vision applications, large scale object detection and recognition via decision trees and deep learning architectures, real-time computer vision algorithms and implementations, visual inference modeling, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. Currently, Xiuwen studies causal graphs analysis to analyze and visualize human language-action features.

College of Communication and Information

Shuyuan Mary Ho Metcalfe is an Associate Professor at the School of Information. Shuyuan’s research focuses on trusted human-computer interactions, specifically addressing issues of cyber insider threats, computer-mediated deception, cyber forensics, cyberbullying, hate speech, dis-(mis-)information, deepfakes, and cyber defense. Shuyuan’s sociotechnical research approach utilizes social-psychological theories in human-centered threat scenarios as simulated by online games. This work includes pragmatic viewpoints on language-action cues to create an innovative methodology for computational modeling of next generation behavioral inference systems, analyzing and sensing complex trust relationships, human disposition and intent detection. Shuyuan currently holds a US patent US-17/162,468 on systems and methods for detecting deception in computer-mediated communication, and also has two copyrighted inventions; Veracity AI truth disclosure against adversarial image manipulation; Pandemic Self Defense (TechID 21-003) mHealth intervention that helps mobile phone users with situational awareness during a pandemic. Shuyuan is currently a NSF-funded cybersecurity scholar and a 2021 Trusted CI fellow with the NSF Cybersecurity Center of Excellence. Please visit iSensor Analytics for Shuyuan’s research.

College of Criminology and Criminal Justice

Carter Hay is a Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the College of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Florida State University, where he has taught since 2003. He is the College’s Liaison for Computer Criminology, coordinating with the Department of Computer Science in administering FSU’s undergraduate and graduate programs in Computer Criminology. His research examines the causes and prevention of individual crime and delinquency over the life course, with special attention to the interplay between personality, the family environment, and peer dynamics (including exposure to cyber bullying).

College of Education Department of Educational Psychology and Learning Systems

Valerie J. Shute  is the Mack & Effie Campbell Tyner Endowed Professor in Education in the Department of Educational Psychology and Learning Systems at Florida State University. Her current research involves designing, developing, and evaluating immersive games with stealth assessment to support learning—of cognitive and non-cognitive knowledge, skills, and dispositions. Her research has resulted in numerous journal articles, books, chapters in edited books, and a patent (see online CV).

Fengfeng Ke  is an Assistant Professor in Education in the Department of Educational Psychology and Learning Systems at Florida State University. Her current research involves designing, developing, and evaluating immersive game-based and mixed-reality-based learning systems for learners with diverse needs. Her research has resulted in numerous journal articles, chapters in edited books, a monograph book, and around $1M in research funding (one National Science Foundation and one Spencer Foundation grant as PI and one MacArthur Foundation grant as Co-PI).

College of Business

Ashley Bush is Associate Professor of Management of Information Systems. Ashley teaches corporate security policy, social and organizational issues in information systems (IS), and e-business strategy. Her research lies at the intersection of information systems strategy and systems development with a focus on organizational systems, digital knowledge networks and platforms, and IS outsourcing. Her work has been funded by Japan’s International Information Science Foundation and Japan’s Strategic Software Research Consortium and China’s National Nature Science Foundation.

Maximilian M. Etschmaier joined the College of Business as Senior Research Scholar in 2018. Max has worked on the design, analysis, and operation of complex systems in a wide variety of domains, including civil and military aviation, urban transportation, manufacturing, and regulation concerning the environment and the security of voting machines. He has lead system design and process improvement ventures, advised business and public sector clients on policy and strategy development, and supported international technology transfer. His current work is focused on a comprehensive theory of Purposeful Systems that is applicable to the design and analysis of systems in any domain. The theory of Purposeful Systems considers the whole life cycle of a system, includes the human as an integral element and helps humans stay in control of systems they create. Applications range from manufacturing and transportation systems and government regulation to sustainability of the global environment and of cyberspace.

College of Law

Lauren Henry Scholz joined the College of Law in 2017. Before coming to FSU, she was a fellow at the Project on the Foundations of Private Law and the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, both at Harvard Law School. She also was a fellow at Yale Law School’s Information Society Project. Her research interests include contracts, torts, commercial law, information privacy and cybersecurity.

Information Technology Services

Bill Hunkapiller is currently the Chief Information Security Officer for Florida State University.