Ezra Systems Seminar: Gregory Falco (Cornell MAE/Systems)

Description

Also available via Zoom
 

Distributed Systems in Adversarial Environments

Components that comprise a system are not necessarily designed to be part of a coordinated, distributed network of assets that interoperate. We network these multi-purpose assets and compel them to work together to achieve a unified purpose such as processing or storage. While we expect these systems to work together for defined use cases, their distributed system capabilities are underutilized – particularly when operating in digitally or physically harsh environments. This talk articulates the underutilized capabilities of distributed assets and describes a suite of distributed system security projects that aim to maximize the system’s potential when amidst an adversarial operating environment.
 

Bio:
Gregory Falco is an assistant professor at the Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and the Systems Engineering Program at Cornell University. He received his Ph.D. from MIT, where NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory funded his doctoral research in Cybersecurity at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). Prior to joining Cornell University, he was an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University’s Institute for Assured Autonomy and completed postdoctoral research at Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute and MIT CSAIL.

Prof. Falco is the director of the Aerospace ADVERSARY Laboratory, which designs and develops next-generation autonomous, secure and resilient space infrastructure. As a hacker, he exploits physics and modern computing systems to achieve missions previously thought to be infeasible. His space technology research is policy-relevant and advances standards and national security conversations relating to space supremacy and cybersecurity. DARPA, the U.S. Space Force, AFRL, NIST and NASA have funded his lab.

Prof. Falco was listed in Forbes 30 Under 30 for Enterprise Technology, named a DARPA RISER, and received the DARPA Young Faculty Award for his disruptive security and space technology research. His research and patents have been spun out into startups that have achieved international impact and recognition, resulting in acquisition. He consults for a range of big technology companies, space systems and defense contractors including Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory. Prior to completing his Ph.D., he was an executive at Accenture.