Keynotes
Saman Zonouz
Associate Professor at Georgia Tech in the Schools of Cybersecurity and Privacy (SCP) and Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE).
Title: Trustworthy Cyber-Physical Critical Infrastructures via Physics-Aware and AI-Powered Security
Saman Zonouz is an Associate Professor at Georgia Tech in the Schools of Cybersecurity and Privacy (SCP) and Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE). Saman directs the Georgia Tech Online Cyber-Physical Master’s Program, and the Cyber-Physical Security Research Laboratory (CPSec) which recently hosted a U.S. Congressional visit to demonstrate its research outcomes. His research (supported by ~$136M collaboratively) focuses on security and privacy research problems in cyber-physical systems. Saman recently was invited to the U.S. National Academies to share insights on OT security and delivered the Plenary Keynote in DOE’s Cybersecurity Conference to a large audience (~2,000 people). His research has been awarded by Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) by the United States President, the NSF CAREER Award in Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS), Significant Research in Cyber Security by the National Security Agency (NSA), Faculty Fellowship Award by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), Google Hall of Fame Security Award, Provost Research Award, Outstanding Faculty Research Award by the Georgia Tech, and the Early Career Academic Achievement Alumni Award by the University of Illinois (UIUC). His research group has disclosed numerous zero-day security vulnerabilities with published CVEs in widely-used critical infrastructure controllers such as Siemens, Allen Bradley, and Wago. Saman is currently a Co-PI on President Biden’s American Rescue Plan $65M Georgia AI Manufacturing (GA-AIM) project, and was invited to co-chair the NSF CPS PI Meeting, the NSF CPS Next Big Challenges Workshop, and CPS Resilience Workshop in 2025. Saman has received Georgia Tech Teaching Awards for his courses “Cybersecurity of Drones” and “Critical Infrastructure Security”. Saman has served as the chair and/or program committee member for several conferences (e.g., IEEE S&P, USENIX Security, CCS, NDSS, DSN, and ICCPS). Saman obtained his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Abstract
Critical cyber-physical infrastructures, such as the power grid and manufacturing, integrate networks of computational and physical processes to provide people across the globe with essential functionalities and services. Protecting these critical infrastructures’ security against adversarial parties is a vital necessity because the failure of these systems would have a debilitating impact on economic security, public health, and safety. Our research aims at the provision of real-world solutions to facilitate the secure and reliable operation of next-generation critical infrastructures. This requires interdisciplinary research efforts across adaptive systems and network security, cyber-physical systems, and trustworthy real-time detection and response mechanisms. In this talk, I will focus on real past and potential future threats against critical infrastructures and embedded controllers, and discuss the challenges in the design, implementation, and analysis of security solutions to protect cyber-physical platforms. I will introduce novel classes of working systems that we have developed to overcome these challenges. In particular, I will present our solutions for security verification, monitoring and response capabilities in cyber-physical controllers for safe power grid, transportation, and manufacturing operations.
Brandon Barry
The CEO and founder at Block Harbor Cybersecurity.
Title: Cybersecurity for the Moving World: Lessons from Connected Vehicles for All Physical AI
Brandon Barry is the CEO and founder of Block Harbor, a leading vehicle cybersecurity company that built the Vehicle Security Engineering Cloud, a platform to centralize, automate, and manage core activities in vehicle cybersecurity engineering. Spun out from Fiat-Chrysler and founded in 2014, Block Harbor’s expertise is built on a decade of performing services with automakers, suppliers, and auditors in vehicle cybersecurity with our Vehicle Security Operations and Vehicle Cybersecurity Labs teams. Now, we’re bringing that capability to all physical AI.
Brandon’s background includes Sc. B in Computer Engineering/Research Focus on Vehicle Cyber from Brown University, Champion at DEF CON’s Car Hacking Village, and Americas lead of the Automotive Security Research Group (ASRG).
Abstract
At Block Harbor, we’ve spent over a decade securing the most widely deployed class of connected AI robots: vehicles. In this talk, I’ll share hard-earned lessons from helping the auto industry adopt secure-by-design practices at scale. Then I’ll highlight the alarming gap emerging today as we begin mass-procuring AI robots—without clear cybersecurity standards or evidence. Finally, I’ll introduce the work we’re doing at Block Harbor to simplify and scale product security for the physical AI era: from design to deployment and beyond.
Dr. Amy McDonnell
Cognitive neuroscientist in the Department of Psychology at the University of Utah.
Title: Rethinking human-in-the-loop modeling
Dr. Amy McDonnell is a cognitive neuroscientist in the Department of Psychology at the University of Utah, where she studies driver attention and cognitive workload in real-world and simulated driving environments. Her work focuses on how people interact with partially automated vehicles, using mobile physiological measurements of brain and heart activity, reaction time tasks, and on-road video data to understand distraction, engagement, and system trust over time. Her research bridges cognitive neuroscience, human factors, and transportation safety, with implications for the security, reliability, and human-centered design of intelligent vehicle systems.
