Georgia Tech Procurement Assistance Center

Georgia Tech marks $42 million expanded research presence in Cobb County

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A Cobb County facility expanded to the tune of $42 million is expected to play a larger role in the state’s aerospace industry and the country’s defense efforts.

Officials with Georgia Tech Research Institute — a nonprofit, applied research division of the Georgia Institute of Technology — cut the ribbon Wednesday, May 8th on its expanded Cobb County Research Facility off Atlanta Road and adjacent to both Dobbins Air Reserve Base and Lockheed Martin.

Wednesday’s ceremony unveiled the redeveloped 350,000 square feet of space, which came to GTRI after it purchased for $21 million four buildings on an unused, 52-acre Lockheed Martin site in December 2017, the MDJ previously reported.  The additional space will give the university entity more room to support its research goals, which its interim director, Lora Weiss, said is of “incredible importance” to national security.

Continue reading at:  Marietta Daily Journal

Faster detection, cleanup of network infections are goals of $12.8 million Georgia Tech project

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Cybersecurity researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have been awarded a $12.8 million contract to develop fundamentally new techniques designed to dramatically accelerate the detection and remediation of infections in local and remote networks. Using novel machine learning techniques that take advantage of large datasets, the researchers will develop ways to detect network infections within 24 hours – before invaders can do serious damage.

The technical goal for the new system, dubbed “Gnomon,” is to detect changes in individual computer systems by analyzing suspicious network traffic that appears weeks or months before any evidence of malicious software – or malware – can be identified. As a proof-of-concept, the researchers will work with two major U.S. telecommunication companies and several petabytes of data in basic research aimed at detecting signals of malicious activity on their networks.

Funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the four-year award is part of the agency’s Harnessing Autonomy for Countering Cyberadversary Systems (HACCS) program. Beyond rapid detection of infections, the project will also accelerate the cleanup after such infections, creating a clearer pathway in a process known as remediation.

“A compromise becomes a breach only if the original infection remains undetected long enough for the adversaries to do damage,” said Manos Antonakakis, an assistant professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the project’s co-principal investigator. “If you look at the major breaches that have occurred, you see that the adversaries were in the systems for months. We want to identify them in a matter of hours to contain the infection before any real damage can be done.”

The new techniques to be developed will address the realization that network attacks cannot be completely blocked by existing defenses and malware-based detection systems. Dynamic intelligence will be a key feature of the system, with the intent of creating a continuously-updated dossier of every address in IPv4 space.

“Gnomon will search for illicit behavior in computer systems and network signals that indicate the start of an infection,” said Michael Farrell, chief strategist at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI), and the principal investigator on the program. “We’ll use our experience with taking down botnets – networks of infected computers – to accelerate the detection and remediation process. It’s imperative to evolve our view of the internetwork infrastructure at the same pace that the threat evolves.”

To protect millions of computers on the networks of the two companies, the researchers must find ways to identify troubling behavior on individual IP addresses without endangering the privacy of individuals. Among the signs of trouble are communications with network locations known to house malicious activity. Such communication is necessary for malicious groups to control computers that have been compromised, and to move data stolen from them.

“If you know where the infecting groups are located, you can very easily exclude most of the benign activities occurring on the network,” Antonakakis said. “We need to be able to identify what has changed in computers throughout the network, understand why the change has happened, and determine whether that change can be attributed to benign or malicious activity. This is a groundbreaking new approach to network security that will require tremendous computing power and infrastructure.”

Ever since the first viruses hit computers in the 1980s, cybersecurity has seen rapid evolution of detection and attack tactics. The success of Gnomon will likely drive adversaries to new attack techniques that may be more complex – and expensive – than existing activities. Making cyberattacks more costly to launch may reduce the profit from such activities, making them less attractive.

“If we can clean up our networks faster and more efficiently, that will increase the cost of the attack, making the adversaries work harder,” Antonakakis said. “If you raise the cost of an attack, the return on investment becomes smaller, while the risk of getting identified becomes higher. We would like to make the business of an attack so unprofitable and so risky for the adversaries that it will not make sense for them to conduct major operations in our networks.”

Success in developing new techniques with the first two telecommunication companies could open the door for scaling up Gnomon to other large networks in industry – and to U.S. government systems.

“Not only will deployment have an obvious benefit of improved hygiene for a significant portion of the U.S. internet infrastructure, but the public-private partnership will allow us to provide valuable feedback throughout the HACCS program on the sort of prototypes that will be necessary to have true business and mission impact in the real world,” Farrell said. “The goals are very ambitious, but if we’re successful, we’ll be able to close the gap between an infection and remediation.”

This program is the latest interdisciplinary research collaboration in cybersecurity at Georgia Tech, orchestrated by the Institute for Information Security & Privacy (IISP). In addition to the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering and GTRI, the project will include Professor Brian Kennedy from Georgia Tech’s School of Physics.

Attribution of malicious cyber activity is an established research thrust at Georgia Tech, and this new contract builds on the early success of another Department of Defense (DoD) sponsored program to enhance attribution. The “Rhamnousia” program is now a $25.3 million contract being led by the same research team of Farrell and Antonakakis.

This material is based upon work supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) under contract number HR001118C0057. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

Source: http://www.news.gatech.edu/2018/05/14/faster-detection-cleanup-network-infections-are-goals-128-million-project

Focus of Feb. 20th Georgia Innovation Summit is emerging technology

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How will emerging technologies affect small businesses and what that sector will be like in the future?

That core question is the theme of the 2018 Georgia Innovation Summit, scheduled for Feb. 20 at the Georgia Tech Research Institute Conference Center in Atlanta. (Register at this link: http://workforce.georgia.org/event/3rd-annual-innovation-summit/)

Now in its third year, the Georgia Innovation Summit is an annual gathering of the state’s top business, education, and government leaders who meet in a series of panel discussions to discuss emerging trends and innovations that will affect businesses of all sizes across Georgia.

The Georgia Mentor Protégé Connection — in partnership with the Georgia Department of Economic Development, the Georgia Centers of Innovation, and Georgia Tech’s Enterprise Innovation Institute (EI2) — is presenting this year’s summit.

Keynote speakers include Jen Bonnett, general manager of Georgia Tech’s Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC), and David Justice, the Georgia Centers of Innovation’s executive director.

“Emerging technologies are rapidly shaping and changing not only the types of businesses that are being created, but also how business itself is being done,” said EI2 vice president Chris Downing.

“The topics and themes we’ll be exploring this year reflect that understanding and will help attendees better understand how they can incorporate and use emerging technologies to drive business forward.”

Among the topics is financial technology (FinTech), an important sector in Georgia’s economy. Jeff Gapusan, ATDC’s FinTech catalyst, will moderate a panel discussion titled “FinTech’s Impact on Your Business.”

The industry is big in Georgia with 70 percent of the $5.3 trillion in annual U.S. card spending being processed through companies in Georgia. “FinTech isn’t static,” Downing said. “There’s constant disruption in this sector which is affecting everything from traditional banking to retail. This panel features the thought leaders in this space who are driving that innovation.”

Other panel topics include the Internet of Things (IoT), dealing with cybersecurity, and connecting businesses with the resources they need to navigate the ever-changing business climate.

Georgia Tech hosts ‘mad scientists’ for U.S. Army symposium

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The U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command (TRADOC) presented its Mad Scientist symposium on “Robotics, Artificial Intelligence and Autonomy” at Georgia Tech on March 7 and 8, 2017.

TRADOC’s Mad Scientist Initiative is a collaborative partnership with academia, industry and government to help anticipate and prepare for the challenges of future warfare. By exploring the operational environment of the future, the Army seeks to shape the future of warfare, rather than respond to it, and increase the rate of innovation within its branch of the military.

Different themed events call on researchers and other partners to imagine the challenges facing the Army in 2030, and provide solutions to those problems today. Lee Grubbs, director of the Mad Scientist Initiative based out of Fort Eustis, Va., said the symposium came to Georgia Tech because that’s where the experts are.

“We want to partner with leading institutions in the topic areas we are interested in,” Grubbs said. “When we wanted to discuss robotics, artificial intelligence and autonomy, we knew that Georgia Tech is one of the leading academic institutions in the country. It seemed like a natural connection.”

Researchers from the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) and Georgia Tech joined faculty from Carnegie Mellon, the University of Maryland as well as Army and industry representatives to present their research and work on robotics and machine learning.

“The opening from Dr. [Stephen] Cross really set the stage in showing what Georgia Tech does for the state, for the country and for our military,” Grubbs said. “We’ve had the best experts in robotics with Dr. Egerstedt, the best in autonomy with Dr. Pippen and the best in artificial intelligence and sensory perception with Dr. Kira.”

Speakers included the following:

  • Dr. Stephen Cross, Georgia Tech Executive Vice President for Research
  • Dr. Zsolt Kira, branch chief of the Advanced Machine Learning Analytics Group within the Robotics and Autonomous Systems Division at GTRI
  • Dr. Charles Pippin, senior research scientist within GTRI’s Aerospace, Transportation and Advanced Systems (ATAS) Laboratory
  • Dr. Magnus Egerstedt, executive director for Georgia Tech’s Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines
  • Dr. Augustus Fountain, deputy chief scientist, Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army (Research & Technology)
  • Dr. Robert Sadowski, robotics senior research scientist, Research, Technology and Integration Director at U.S. Army TARDEC, U.S. Army Chief Roboticist
  • Alexander Kott, chief scientist, U.S. Army Research Laboratory
  • Juliane Gallina, director, U.S. Federal Solutions, IBM Watson
  • Dr. Gary Ackerman, University of Maryland, National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism

During the two-day event, attendees were encouraged to attend a robotics “petting zoo,” where they were afforded a close-up look at some autonomous vehicles and other examples of artificial intelligence, machine sensing and machine learning.

IBM Watson representatives showed off the ability for Watson to communicate and parse native human language, even detecting the “sentiment” behind the statements.

Georgia Tech researchers are working on several items, including:

  • A low-powered brachiating robot that swings by its “arms” to monitor plants in a field.
  • A 25-pound, helicopter-type unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that can deliver up to 65 pounds of payload in the field.
  • A combined LIDAR with a UAV to map areas, seeking changes to the environment, people’s walking habits, and reconstructing static and dynamic objects in three-dimensional space.

More than 100 registered and attended, including representatives from NATO, South Korea and from several other European countries. More than 200 watched the event at any given time online from around the world, and even were participating in live chatrooms during the event. All of the content are posted on the TRADOC G-2 OE Enterprise YouTube page.

Source: https://gtri.gatech.edu/casestudy/georgia-tech-hosts-mad-scientists-us-army-symposiu

GTPAC-hosted event once again a big hit with small businesses, government agencies, and prime contractors

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Attendees got a chance to learn about the benefits of membership from NCMA representatives.
Attendees got a chance to learn about the benefits of membership from NCMA representatives.

The Jan. 24, 2017 Industry Day — sponsored by the Atlanta chapter of the National Contract Management Association (NCMA) — was a big hit with the 325 people who attended.

The Georgia Tech Procurement Assistance Center (GTPAC) hosted the event at the Georgia Tech Research Institute’s Conference Center in Atlanta.  GTPAC is one of many programs that make up Georgia Tech’s Enterprise Innovation Institute.

Vendors and government buyers got a chance to mingle and network at the Jan. 24 GTPAC-hosted event.
Vendors and government buyers mingled and networked at the Jan. 24 GTPAC-hosted event.

It is estimated that 250 small businesses participated in the day’s activities, which featured presentations on various federal, state and local government agencies’ contract opportunities to hundreds as well as individual appointments between hundreds of businesses, 49 buyers and 12 resource partners.

The buyers participating in the event included representatives of government agencies as well as prime contractors looking for subcontractors.

Sharon Morrow of the U.S. Army's Small Business Office answers questions from the audience about upcoming contract opportunities.
Sharon Morrow of the U.S. Army’s Small Business Office answered questions from the audience about upcoming contract opportunities.

The keynote address of the day was delivered by Sharon Morrow, Mentor-Protégé Program Manager and Small Business Liaison for SBIR/STTR at the Army’s Office of Small Business Programs.

Other featured speakers included NCMA Atlanta Chapter president Christina Edwards; GTPAC program manager Joe Beaulieu; Georgia State University executive-in-residence Cassius Butts; and NCMA Atlanta small business chair and CDC small business manager Gwendolyn Miles.

GTPAC's program manager acted as MC for the morning's activities.
GTPAC’s program manager Joe Beaulieu acted as MC for the morning’s activities in the packed auditorium at the Georgia Tech Research Institute’s conference center.

Business tips were provided during the morning’s general session by Stacey Larson of CBS, Terri Denison of the SBA, Eugene Tinker of Certified Technical Experts, Prudence Howard of the VA, and Erv Koehler of GSA.

Copies of presentations which were made at the event can be downloaded here: Industry Day 01.24.2017

Vendors learned about contracting with the Atlanta Housing Authority.
Vendors learned about contracting with the Atlanta Housing Authority.

Information about upcoming contracting opportunities was presented by Jeff Napier of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Angela Whitmore of the Atlanta Housing Authority, and Tony Ortiz of the FAA.

In a busy matchmaking room, vendors presented their capabilities to buyers from government and industry.
In a busy matchmaking room, vendors presented their capabilities to buyers representing both government and industry.

Three consecutive hours of “matchmaking”– appointments between buyers and sellers — were scheduled during the afternoon.

At the Dept. of Administrative Services' table, vendors learned about how to do business with the State of Georgia.
At the Dept. of Administrative Services’ table, vendors learned about how to do business with the State of Georgia.

Government representatives from the VA, GSA, Clayton County, HUD, FAA, the Georgia Department of Administrative Services, the Atlanta Housing Authority, and Georgia Tech’s MBDA Business Center staffed tables to meet with interested vendors.

Subcontracting opportunities were a hot topic at IBM's matchmaking table.
Supplier opportunities were a hot topic at IBM’s matchmaking table.

In addition, many corporate buyers participated, including representatives from Booz Allen Hamilton, CBS, DB Consulting, IBM, ICF International, Georgia Power, LMI, Leidos, Northrop Grumman, RTI International, and Wyle Services.

Participants got a chance to learn about the services offered by the MBDA Business Center at Georgia Tech.
Participants learned about the services offered by the MBDA Business Center at Georgia Tech.

Running concurrently with the matchmaking appointments was a presentation on how to do business in the government sector conducted by one of GTPAC’s counselors, Tom Larkin.  Dozens of people attended this workshop as a productive way to spend their time while waiting for their appointments.

Vendors received one-on-one help from GTPAC counselors like Steve Bettner (l) seen here.
Vendors received one-on-one help from GTPAC counselors like Steve Bettner seen here on the left.

Scores of the small businesses in attendance also took advantage of this occasion to receive contract-related counseling from the entire team of GTPAC counselors and staff who came in from all parts of the state to support the event.

Bridget Bennett and Donna Vandersall spoke to many attendees throughout the day about the services offered by GTPAC.
Bridget Bennett and Donna Vandersall spoke to many attendees throughout the day about the no-cost services offered by GTPAC.

GTPAC representatives provided help to businesses on such topics as registration in the System for Award Management, certifications, and creating effective capabilities statements.  GTPAC also helped out-of-state attendees connect with the Procurement Technical Assistance Center (PTAC) in their locale.

Seen on the left, technology partner Matt Gonzalez of IVSN explained the registration process to a participant.
Technology partner Matt Gonzalez of IVSN (seated, left) explained the matchmaking process to a participant.

Attendees at the Industry Day used a special web site and a smartphone app to register for and check-in at the event — and keep track of their matchmaking appointments.  The website and the app were developed by IVSN Group LLC.   The leadership of NCMA’s Atlanta Chapter contracted with IVSN to manage registration and appointment-making for the complex Jan. 24th event.  The app – called PTACGo! – can be downloaded free from Google Play (for Android devices) or Apple’s App Store (for iPhones).  It allows users to see, and register for, small business events across the country on smart phones, tablets, laptops and PCs.

Members of the Rocky Top event management team took a quick break from a long day that began at 7am and concluded at 4pm.
Members of the Rocky Top event management team took a quick break from a long day that began at 7am and concluded at 4pm.

Adding support to the day, a four-person team from Rocky Top Event Management Services provided on-site management.  Rocky Top provides management services to the Association of Procurement Technical Assistance Centers.

Special thanks go out to CBS, Axiom Corporation, and Rumph and Associates for sponsoring the Industry Day’s breakfast refreshments.

Below are a few more photos from the active and successful day.

In both formal and informal settings, buyers and sellers had lots of opportunities to exchange ideas and information.
In both formal and informal settings, buyers and sellers had lots of opportunities to exchange ideas and information.
An attendees is seen here showing off a 3-D printing creating to interested buyers at CDC's matchmaking table.
An attendee is seen here showing off a 3-D printing creation to interested buyers at CDC’s matchmaking table.
Lockheed Martin representatives had a steady string of visitors during the matchmaking event.
LMI representatives had a steady string of visitors during the matchmaking event.
GSA's acting regional administrator Erv spoke about his agency's future buying needs.
GSA’s acting regional administrator Erv Koehler spoke about his agency’s future buying needs.
Georgia Power was one of many corporate entities who sent buyers to talk about contract opportunities.
Georgia Power was one of many corporate entities who sent buyers to talk about contract opportunities.
GTPAC clients had the opportunity to learn about subcontracting opportunities with Booz Allen Hamilton.
GTPAC clients had the opportunity to learn about subcontracting opportunities with Booz Allen Hamilton.
CDC's chief of contracting Jeff Napier explained his agency's mission and buying needs.
CDC’s chief of contracting Jeff Napier explained his agency’s mission and buying needs.
GTPAC staff Nancy Cleveland and Tom Larkin counseled numerous buinesses about government contracting topics throughout the day.
Nancy Cleveland and Tom Larkin were 2 of 9 members of the GTPAC team who counseled scores of business persons on government contracting topics throughout the day.

Registration is now open for GTPAC-hosted, NCMA-sponsored Jan. 24 Industry Day

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The Atlanta chapter of the National Contract Management Association (NCMA) will sponsor an Industry Day on January 24, 2017.  Once again, the Georgia Tech Procurement Assistance Center (GTPAC) will host this day-long event at the Georgia Tech Research Institute’s Conference Center in Atlanta.

The day features information on upcoming government contracting opportunities, workshops, and matchmaking appointments between small businesses, agencies and prime contractors.

ncma-gtpac

Registration for the event is now open, and advance registration is required in order to attend.

To register, click here.

The Industry Day will be held from 8:00 am to 4:00 pm at the Georgia Tech Research Institute’s conference center located at 250 14th St., NW, Atlanta, GA 30318.

Last year, the Industry Day drew nearly 300 people — representing both small and large businesses, government agencies, and experts in the field of government contracting.  More than 500 individual appointments were conducted between small businesses and buyers.  Details on last year’s event can be found by clicking here.

In order to prepare to attend this year’s event, GTPAC recommends that you read these three articles:

Diamond Eye provides real-time, streaming data science to business world

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A new analytics framework might soon help businesses monitor massive amounts of data in a user-friendly way.

GTRI logoDeveloped by the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI), Diamond Eye is a platform for one-stop data analytics. Before creating Diamond Eye, GTRI researchers had built a series of analytics tools for individual customers, such as an application-specific tool for monitoring Twitter and open source data for first responders. But because they were developed for specific applications, these tools were not designed to be used beyond the original goals and customers.

Diamond Eye takes advantage of the expertise developed for these projects. The platform enables data ingestion, processing and visualization in a single package, and is able to adapt to new data sources, new analytics, or new visualizations. Developing a flexible application program interface (API) helped make it user-friendly.

“Before Diamond Eye, it was difficult to share analytics because only the developer that had created it had the access or the know-how to use it,” said Amy Sharma, a research engineer at GTRI. “With this new framework, anyone can utilize the analytics and any developer can add new data, analytics, or visualizations.”

The system was designed to help users answer historical and real-time questions with their data. It can also provide situational and predictive results, using information about the past to help predict future conditions.

The team’s analytics work under GTRI’s Business Intelligence Strategic Initiative focuses on open data sets, such as those from social media platforms like Twitter, as well as on closed-source data provided by partners.

To learn about the key problems that businesses wanted to solve with analytics, scientists working on the project interviewed more than a dozen people in various sectors of business, with an emphasis on marketing, social media and retail organizations. An oft-cited need was for analyzing one-to-one marketing data.

For consumer brands, a traditional marketing technique involves creating a message and then broadcasting that message on TV or the Internet, hoping it resonates with a lot of potential customers. In a more modern approach, the focus is on identifying interested individuals in social media and interacting with them directly. That one-on-one marketing can either be through personalized campaigns on such platforms as Instagram and Twitter, or by identifying influential users on Twitter and interacting with them directly in the hope that they will share the message to their followers.

“One of the possible applications of our technology is to help companies better understand who is out there in social media, how you should interact with them, and how your interactions are being received,” said David Ediger, a research engineer at GTRI.

Another big question that almost every company wanted answered is how to measure marketing value on social media. The team hasn’t yet come up with a way to help companies measure this, but this solution could be in the future for Diamond Eye.

“Companies are spending very, very large budgets on marketing and they want to know if they’re getting bang for their buck on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram,” Ediger said. “We have not solved that problem, but I think we’re scratching at some possible solutions for how to measure return on investment.”

The team recently put Diamond Eye to the test by developing a social media monitoring platform for the Offshore Technology Conference, a conference that attracts more than 90,000 persons each May in Houston, Texas. In less than six weeks, GTRI researchers added the appropriate data feeds, analytics, and visualizations to provide basic Twitter statistics such as timelines, tweet frequency, follows, and platforms. They also created complicated streaming analytics to measure sentiment and most influential users, and the ability to track and sort images on Instagram and Twitter.

The team’s analytics are also useful beyond marketing. For example, Diamond Eye could also help manufacturing companies understand why equipment in one region might be breaking down more often than in other areas.

“We can marry text information from a human with numeric information from a machine and then build models about failure rates,” Sharma said. “If we notice a pattern in which machines in one region seems to be breaking more often, the company can figure out whether they might have received a bad batch of replacement parts – or whether the issue might be a bad repair person or technique.”

The research was supported by GTRI’s independent research and development program.

International tech companies join new Georgia Tech ‘Internet of Things’ research center

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The recently established Center for the Development and Application of Internet-of-Things Technologies (CDAIT) at the Georgia Institute of Technology announces that AirWatch, AT&T and Samsung Electronics constitute the inaugural group of founding members. The involvement of these companies reflects their continuing commitment to the advancement of the transformational capabilities of the Internet of Things (IoT).

“Internet of Things” refers to the ability for all types of devices to communicate with each other through networks like the Internet, radio frequencies and other forms of transmission. Devices could include the equipment in cars, homes, trucks, cargo, health care, and other everyday objects. This new area of technological innovation is receiving increasing attention around the world because of its potential impact on all sectors of the economy and society.

Together with Georgia Tech and GTRI, the founding members will closely monitor and actively participate in the expansion of the rapidly growing IoT industry. Other leading global companies involved in IoT have indicated their interest in getting engaged with CDAIT.

“Having companies of this stature join Georgia Tech in this effort speaks volumes about what we’re trying to accomplish,” said Andrew Gerber, Georgia Tech Senior Vice President and Director of the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI). “We are proud to be recognized as a trusted collaborator in the Internet-of-Things arena. We are eager to harness the unique expertise of our professors, researchers and students throughout the Internet-of-Things value chain.”

For more than a century, AT&T has consistently provided innovative, reliable, high-quality products and services. With more than 120 million wireless customers, AT&T’s mission is to connect people with their world, everywhere they live and work, and do it better than anyone else.

“We’ve had a long-standing relationship with Georgia Tech for many years as we share a common commitment to pushing the boundaries of innovation and taking education to new levels,” said Chris Penrose, senior vice president, Internet of Things Organization, AT&T Mobility. “The opportunity for IoT is real.  It’s already reshaping industries and solving real business issues for companies around the globe.  We’ve been a leading participant in the IoT space for nearly eight years and look forward to extending our thought-leadership with innovators in our own backyard.”

AirWatch® by VMware® is the leading enterprise mobility management platform. With more than a decade in business, AirWatch continues to develop solutions that empower companies to focus on innovative uses of mobile technology rather than dealing with the complexities of managing mobility.

“AirWatch is a longtime supporter of Georgia Tech innovation, and our support of CDAIT furthers our commitment to collaborate on strategic initiatives,” said John Marshall, senior vice president and general manager, AirWatch. “We see an incredible opportunity for the Internet of Things to redefine enterprise mobility and our daily lives. We look forward to working alongside Georgia Tech on building these transformative technologies of tomorrow.”

Headquartered in Suwon, South Korea, Samsung Electronics seeks to inspire the world and shape the future with transformative ideas and technologies, redefining the worlds of TVs, smartphones, wearable devices, tablets, cameras, digital appliances, printers, medical equipment, network systems, and semiconductor and LED solutions. Samsung Electronics also leads in the IoT space through, among others, the company’s Smart Home and Digital Health initiatives.

“Samsung Electronics is looking forward to working closely with the CDAIT’s outstanding members to drive the IoT research areas and core technologies,” said Jin Wook Lee, Vice President of Software R&D Center at Samsung Electronics. “We will support CDAIT in its efforts toward providing in-depth research into the various aspects of IoT technology.”

Housed at the Georgia Institute of Technology in the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI), the Center for the Development and Application of Internet-of-Things Technologies (CDAIT pronounced sedate) is a global, non-profit, partner-funded center located in Atlanta, Georgia, United States, that fosters interdisciplinary research and education while driving general awareness about the Internet of Things. It aims at efficiently identifying, understanding and solving for its sponsors challenges and problems that may arise along the whole IoT value chain. CDAIT bridges sponsors with Georgia Tech faculty and researchers as well as industry members with similar interests.

“Our center will greatly benefit from having a continuous and close dialogue with premier technological companies of the caliber of AirWatch, AT&T and Samsung Electronics,” said Alain Louchez, CDAIT Managing Director. “With their help, we are looking forward to making significant contributions to the IoT industry.”

Learn more about CDAIT at www.cdait.gatech.edu.

Source: http://gtri.gatech.edu/news/tech-companies-join-new-internet-things-research-c 

GTRI assists Georgia National Guard members with ‘Cyber Shield 2015’

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Members of the Georgia Army National Guard identified and thwarted cyber attackers, with some help from the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI).

GTRI logoGTRI’s Secure Collaborative Visualization Environment (SCoVE) again served as the site for the Georgia Guard’s Defensive Cyber Operations (DCO) team to participate in the National Guard’s annual Cyber Shield 2015 exercise. GTRI’s collaboration with the Georgia DCO team began in 2013 and has supported this event and Cyber Shield 2014.

Coordinated from Camp Atterbury-Muscatatuck, Indiana, more than 42 states and territories—including Army National Guard, Air National Guard and Reserve Component service members participated in the annual exercise. The purpose of the exercise is to develop, train and exercise the Guard’s DCO specialists.

As part of the DCO Blue Team, the Georgia Guard members worked to identify and thwart attacks from the rival Red Team, a group from other States’ Guard members. Sgt. Shari Simzyk, a network analyst on the Georgia DCO team, analyzed IDS (intrusion and detection systems) in real time and historical logs.

“As part of the network team, I worked to defend a network from intrusion,” Simzyk said. “The SCoVE allows our team to be able to communicate with the Windows team easily. By participating in this event at GTRI, we are able to use some of the open-source tools we don’t normally use.”

This exercise is part of a capstone event to test our skills; basically, showing how the State could deploy the Guard in the event of a cyber attack on government and critical infrastructure networks supporting the residents of Georgia or the Southeast.

“A cyber-security attack is just like a natural disaster,” said Chief Warrant Officer 3 Samuel Blaney, the Information Assurance Manager and Defensive Cyber Technician with the Georgia National Guard. “Exercises like these help build our team members’ skills, capabilities and knowledge in cyber incident response.”

Blaney said that this particular exercise allows Guard members to integrate with the state’s academic professionals, and that using GTRI’s facilities allowed his teams to go above and beyond mission parameters. With the teams able to work together and communicate more easily, Guard members went beyond just locating where “hackers” attacked the system, and identifying which files have been changed.

“Our teams today have worked to locate the hackers, and even prevent further intrusion,” Blaney said. “With the facilities here allowing ease of communications, the teams were able to identify, anticipate and ‘hunt’ the hackers.”

Blaney said the DCO team will use Cyber Shield to prepare for a tabletop exercise with Georgia state officials in April, labeled Cyber Defender 2015. GTRI, who works closely with the Georgia Emergency Management Agency/Homeland Security (GEMA/HS), also will participate in that event.

Source: http://gtri.gatech.edu/casestudy/gtri-assists-georgia-guard-cyber-shield-2015

GTRI helps develop improved telemedicine system to connect doctors with autism patients in rural Georgia

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To get the best care for her three autistic children, Mandi Larkin would drive three hours from her family’s home in Tifton, Ga., to Marcus Autism Center in Atlanta. The drive to and from Atlanta was exhausting. Missed work, missed school and the long drive were constant sources of stress.

Today, Larkin’s children receive world-class medical care at her local hospital via a state-of-the-art telemedicine link to Marcus Autism Center. The recently improved telemedicine system was optimized by scientists at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) and Cisco Systems, Inc. Marcus Autism Center’s telemedicine room is now a showcase for providers of telemedicine, where improved video capabilities and an ergonomic suite allow patients in rural Georgia to meet face-to-face with medical specialists in Atlanta.

“The accessibility to the doctors in Atlanta is the big thing,” Larkin said. “Not everyone has the means to make that kind of a drive. Telemedicine gives us access to the doctors that we normally wouldn’t have access to.”

A major goal of the telemedicine redesign is to create telepresence, clinical workflow, and diagnostic processes that can enable clinicians to identify rural children with autism spectrum disorders as early as 18 months. Today, these children are often diagnosed as late as seven years old.

GTRI logoGTRI’s telemedicine efforts are supported by a donation from Allen Ecker, a Georgia Tech alum and former executive vice president of Scientific Atlanta.

“One of the biggest issues facing our country is both the cost of healthcare and the scarcity of healthcare providers as the demands of healthcare get larger,” Ecker said. “I think that telemedicine will address both of those problems. It reduces the cost of an appointment and it also reduces the time needed for the clinician.”

Cisco, as a provider of telemedicine equipment at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, also donated approximately half-a-million dollars’ worth of equipment and software toward telemedicine enhancements at both Marcus Autism Center and Children’s.

“Cisco worked hand-in-hand with us from the beginning,” said Courtney Crooks, a senior research scientist at GTRI, who is leading the project. “In a patient-provider relationship, the experience is really important. We wanted to ensure that the telepresence is at least as good as when you’re sitting in the office with a provider. Plus, we wanted to use technology to enhance the clinical workflow and capabilities of the provider, beyond what they may be able to accomplish through manual means.”

Felissa Goldstein, M.D., is the primary doctor using the improved telemedicine system at the Marcus Autism Center. Goldstein, a child and adolescent psychiatrist, is one of the most active providers of telemedicine in the state of Georgia. She uses the system for providing early screening and continuing care for children with autism spectrum disorders.

Until this past summer, Goldstein had been using a telemedicine system in her office that, among other human factors problems, had poor lighting, muffled sound, and displaced monitors which created heavily reduced eye contact.

The GTRI systems engineers applied their expertise to Goldstein’s clinical setting. They studied the best way to orient the telemedicine monitors so that the eye contact and visual connection between doctor and patient was optimized without either person having to crane their neck.

The old telemedicine system used two monitors side-by-side. The monitor on the left displayed medical records, while the monitor on the right provided a view of the patients via a webcam atop the monitor.

“I’d have to tell the family when I would start that ‘If I look away, it’s not because I’m not paying attention to you. It’s because I’m looking at your chart,’” Goldstein said.

The GTRI engineers saw that a redesign of the monitors was required; one which did not require the doctor to turn their head or shift their gaze in an obvious way.

Crooks’ team shadowed Dr. Goldstein during her appointments and developed a streamlined, ergonomic telemedicine system. Now the monitor that displays medical records is above the patient monitor. A powerful webcam sits in the space between the monitors. If Goldstein moves her gaze from the top monitor to the bottom monitor, all the patients see is a slight movement of her head. Goldstein said the improved eye-contact is the biggest advantage to the new system.

“GTRI worked with us really carefully to maximize eye contact, and I feel like it’s really adding to my ability to provide good patient care by telemedicine,” Goldstein said.

The new telemedicine system is now in a room of its own. The lighting in the larger space was designed to make Goldstein appear natural, and not dark and shadowy like in the old system. The desk and monitors are now ergonomic, and the room is soundproof.

Gone is the need for the old-fashioned webcam remote control, and in its place is an iPad which acts as the central control station for the telemedicine system. Goldstein now can tap the screen to control the camera. She can pan and zoom to follow children around the room as they play with toys, or tightly focus on the parents as they praise or discipline their children. The iPad is also enabled for capabilities such as touchpad tagging of behavioral events of interest that may occur during a session.

If Goldstein needs to note a significant event, she can flag it in the system. Later, she analyzes the data to look for trends, such as how a symptom develops over time.

Another improvement is the system’s ability to load unique settings for individual families. Goldstein can also share her screens remotely, as she does when giving lectures. This feature can also be used to share educational materials with families during session, as needed.

The new telemedicine system was transitioned over the summer of 2013. Crooks’ research team is in discussions with several other funders for ways to use the system for different clients’ needs, such as teletraining, parent education, and dependent care in the military. Those applications are still under development, but the system’s value to families with children is already changing their lives.

When Mandi Larkin arrives to her appointment at Tift Regional Medical Center with her children — ages 3, 4 and 6 — a nurse guides them through registration and paperwork, then takes the kids’ vital signs and leads the family to the telemedicine room. When they arrive, Goldstein is already on the telemedicine video screen.

“It’s usually very prompt, and that’s something I really like,” Larkin said. “Once you get there you have your appointment time and there’s never more than a 5-minute wait.”

After her telemedicine session, Larkin is faxed a report detailing the visit. Before, she had to bring a pen and notepad to every appointment to have a record of what transpired.

Larkin said she would prefer to be with the doctor in person, but that isn’t realistic, so telemedicine is the next best thing. In some cases, telemedicine is even better than being with the doctor in person, Larkin said.

“I think the doctor gets a little bit more interaction from the kids through the screen because they more or less shut down around new people,” Larkin said. “With telemedicine, to the kids it’s just somebody on a TV screen talking to them. The doctor can see a little bit more and get a little bit more from them than if she was in the room in front of them.”

Research shows that children in rural areas, on average, aren’t diagnosed with autism spectrum disorders until age 7. Ideally, diagnosis should take place as early as 18 months so the children can benefit from proper care as early as possible. The new telemedicine system could help bring earlier diagnosis to rural children.

“We’re helping to screen a lot of children with developmental disabilities so that it’s no longer seven years until they are diagnosed,” Goldstein said. “The younger you can diagnose, the better off you are.”

Goldstein also travels to rural clinics throughout the state, where many of the families have never seen a specialist for children with developmental disabilities. Future work with the telemedicine system will convert all six of her outreach clinics to video conferencing clinics.

Overall, Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta partners with Georgia Partnership for Telehealth (GPT) to see patients at more than 30 telemedicine sites throughout the state of Georgia in a variety of specialties ranging from Cardiology to Sports Medicine. GTRI’s work with Marcus Autism Center will also be applied to other telemedicine suites at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta.

“In collaboration with Cisco, we came up with a standard that other clinics can adopt,” Crooks said.

If enhancements to remote site systems are desired, this standard can be used to customize a suitable package that will be interoperable with the system at Marcus Autism Center. Sites may be eligible for funding for these upgrades through a variety of sources.

The work between GTRI, Cisco and Marcus is continuing with the ultimate goal of being able to perform diagnosis and therapy in the child patient’s home, with the parents as the caregivers, directed by clinicians using the telemedicine system.

In the meantime, the new telemedicine system is already improving lives. Larkin has been using telemedicine for about three and a half years. To her family, it’s meant a major improvement in the quality of life.

“It’s all worth it because I get to see the doctor and I don’t have to drive three hours with my three autistic kids,” Larkin said.

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