Research on innovative, integrated outreach programs guided three separate week-long outreach camps held across two summers (2018 and 2019). These camps introduced computer science through real-world applications and hands-on activities, each dealing with cybersecurity principles. The camps utilized low-cost hardware and free software to provide a total of 84 students (aged 10 to 18 years) a unique learning experience. Based on feedback from the 2018 camp, a new pre/post survey was developed to assess changes in participant knowledge and interest. Student participants in the 2019 iteration showed drastic changes in their cybersecurity content recall (33% pre vs. 96% post), cybersecurity concept identification within real-world scenarios, and exhibited an increased ability to recognize potential cybersecurity threats in their every-day lives (22% pre vs. 69% post). Finally, students’ self-reported interest-level before and after the camp show a positive increase across all student participants, with the number of students who where highly interested in cybersecurity more than doubling from 31% pre-camp to 65% post-camp. Implications for educators are large as these activities and experiences can be interwoven into traditional schooling as well as less formal camps as pure computer science or through integrated STEM.
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), referenced as drones, have advanced to consumer adoption for hobby and business use. Drone applications, such as infrastructure technology, security mechanisms, and resource delivery, are just the starting point. More complex tasks are possible through the use of UAV swarms. These tasks increase the potential impacts that drones will have on smart cities, modern cities which have fully adopted technology in order to enhance daily operations as well as the welfare of it's citizens. Smart cities not only consist of static mesh networks of sensors, but can contain dynamic aspects as well including both ground and air based autonomous vehicles.Networked computational devices require paramount security to ensure the safety of a city. To accomplish such high levels of security, services rely on secure-by-design protocols, impervious to security threats. Given the large number of sensors, autonomous vehicles, and other advancements, smart cities necessitates this level of security. The SHARK protocol (Secure, Heterogeneous, Autonomous, and Rotational Knowledge for Swarms) ensures this kind of security by allowing for new applications for UAV swarm technology. Enabling drones to circle a target without a centralized control or selecting lead agents, the SHARKS protocol performs organized movement among agents without creating a central point for attackers to target. Through comparisons on the stability of the protocol in different settings, experiments demonstrate the efficiency and capacity of the SHARKS protocol.
is currently pursuing her Ph.D. at the University of Wyoming. After completing Bachelors degrees in Math and Computer Science, her research focused on distributed systems, swarm communications, and encryption mechanisms. She is currently working on distributed continuous authentication systems and consensus protocols.
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