I will be attending the upcoming IEEE Women in Engineering International Leadership Conference (WIE-ILC), to be held April 23-25, in San Jose, California. There are two events in conjunction with the WIE-ILC specific to Cybersecurity. The first is an “Innovations in Cybersecurity” panel. I am one of three women leaders participating in the panel that will provide expertise, perspective, and discussion on current cybersecurity strategies.

I had the opportunity to participate in the Wall Street Journal CIO Network Conference. Leading technology and information executives convened for this third annual meeting in San Diego, California on February 2-3, 2015. These leading CIOs and CTOs came together to discuss and debate key action items to spur better decision-making, greater technology, and innovation in corporations. I was invited to participate as a subject matter expert in the area of cybersecurity and was assigned to the breakout session on "The National Agenda". 

I find that working with CIOs and industry leaders provides a valuable perspective on hard problems and helps ground our research. I had some very interesting and informative discussions with CIOs from organizations ranging from a global consulting company to technologists from cybersecurity start-up companies.

Keynote speakers included:

• J. Craig Venter, Ph.D.
  Co-founder, Executive Chairman and CEO
  Human Longevity, Inc.

• John T. Chambers
  Chairman and CEO
  Cisco

• Maarten Sierhuis, Ph.D.
  Director, Nissan Research Center Silicon Valley
  Nissan North America

• Howard A. Schmidt, Ph.D.
  Co-Founder, Ridge-Schmidt Cyber, LLC
  Cybersecurity Coordinator and Special Assistant to President Obama (2009-2012)
  Cybersecurity Advisor to President Bush (2001-2003)

I am here in Washington D.C. preparing for the Smart America Challenge Expo.  Our team - the Smart Energy Cyber-Physical Systems – will be demonstrating an integrated federated cyber physical testbed for experimentation and analysis for improving efficiency and resiliency, as well as protecting the crucial resource from potential terrorist attacks.

At the same time that I'm keynoting at the Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC), the DETER team is launching a new Web site. The keynote address, the accompanying paper, and the web site are all part of a new level of information about the DETER project. I'm really looking forward to the talk and to announcing the new DETER web site that you see here.