ISEF 2017 - NSA RD Award Trip
It's that time again. The week where I work lots of hours and have lots of fun too. It's ISEF 2017 week. First time reading this and wondering what is ISEF? Well, ISEF is the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. It's the largest science fair with about 1800 students from 80 countries coming to it. To be able to attend these students, called finalists, have won at least one recognized science fair. In 2015, I had the idea to create a Science of Security award to recognize outstanding scientific cybersecurity research at the high school level. The award shows that cybersecurity is important and there can be money won by putting a project together. If students decide to research, then maybe they will find it interesting which could lead to more education and careers in cybersecurity. It's as simple as that, inspire kids to pursue good scientific research in cybersecurity. We can inspire more than just the few kids that win our prize.
This year, I'm in Los Angeles! Woo! So what's new for us this year. Well, the biggest thing is that this year, in addition to the three Science of Security awards (1st, and 2nd x 2), there is a prize in mathematics. To handle the mathematics part, we have 2 extra mathematicians with us. Not too much yet, just going to get a good night sleep and then tomorrow time to work.
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Adam
Ok, Day 3.
The first thing, is a big shout out and thank you for Heather for organizing and making my day 2 posts look great. The main job of today was to examine the projects and decide on a short list of who we want to talk to on Wednesday. We want to know which projects we want to interview so that on Wednesday night we can decide on the winners of the awards. This was no easy task. I personally started with 62 projects to consider, and the other other judges had their own lists. I visited the posters, and read them to get an idea of what was being done. I also read the supplemental materials set out at the posters, such as log books, reports, and other documentation. I then considered how well the topic fits with the Science of Security domain. The key aspects of that are, are they doing scientific work and increasing understanding, and is it security related. We stayed at the exhibit hall until 10pm when it closed for the night. We weren't the last out, but close to it. I have a short list for tomorrow of around a dozen projects to try to talk to.
The two judges for the Mathematics prize also worked until 10pm. They have a tough assignment with their prize.
A nice note - we saw new research posters for 3 previous winners of our ISEF prize. Elliot Gorokhovsky the first winner in 2015 and Rucha Joshi and Karthik Yegnesh, the two 2nd place winners of 2016.
I'm not going to write much more than this tonight, as its late, almost 11pm and tomorrow is an early day. We are meeting at 7:15am so as to be ready for the doors opening to interviews at 8:00am.
Adam
Oh, the sos tattoo is still going strong on my arm.
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Day 4 is the big day at ISEF.
Millions of dollars are on the line as students explain their research projects for the interviewing judges. For us, Wednesday is the day that we interview the students of yesterday's best projects. This day greatly helps us make decisions. How do we do this? First, we gather in the judge's room, with our special NSA table, and then we develop our plan. At 8am we head to the exhibit hall with the waiting and eager students. From 8 - 9am the hall is just for special award judges, that's us! There we get to interview students. We started as two teams, my team started in software systems. We were able to make good progress until about 9am, when the hall is opened for grand prize judges. These grand prize judges have set times scheduled with the finalists and we must work around their schedule. It becomes an optimization problem of finding a path through the nodes (students) so you can meet with everyone while they are free. We successfully completed our list around 3:30pm and then went into deliberations to decide who would get which awards. This was a hard challenge as we talked about the attributes of each project. A few hours later we reached the results and I turned the results into the officials. We then celebrated and made the award certificates to hand out the next day.
And the winners are..... Well, I can't tell you. The winners are announced Thursday night at an award ceremony. (Yes, I'll be wearing a suit again)
But what is tomorrow? It's public day, where the public is invited into the hall to see the exhibits and 4,000 or so school children visit the projects and the ODNI booth. That's where I'll be, inspiring the youth to pursue STEM and cyber education careers and education.
And it's time to say good night, and sleep.
Adam
P.S. Sully says "Hi" to the VO readers, and "You're Welcome" for today's photo of Adam.
And the winners are posted on a news article: https://cps-vo.org/node/35504
Hi Everyone, writing this at the end of day 2.
Starting this entry after I've been working for 13 hours. So, if I make a spelling or grammar error you know why. What was today? Today was the first big day. It started this morning with the search for the boxes of materials that we had sent here. I tried to pick them up on Sunday, but they couldn't find me in the system. Today, with the shipper they had no issues finding the boxes.
Once we had the boxes, we took them and went and found the Intelligence Community (IC) Booth. We are in a joint booth this year. Attending is FBI, NGA,NCTC, DIA, NSA. We each have our materials. I even got to see our ARO friend in Raleigh and NCSU staff. It's really a small world.
New for NSA/SoS are the SoS temporary Tattoos. yay. While, I haven't gotten Sully down to apply one, yet, hear that sully? you're getting one. I have decided to model one. Lets see how well it wears.I am now truly a walking billboard for SoS. Clothing wasn't enough. :)
After, working the booth for a few hours, I went to the VIP reception. They let me in too. It was nice. Did you know that you can put cheesecake on a stick. It's true.
And now about the big event. This evening was the opening ceremonies. And what we have been waiting for, how does ISEF followup professional pogo stick jumpers (Pittsburgh) and tesla coil music (Phoenix). Well, dancers with a bunch of led lights wireless controlled. Felt like they were on stage for two min. I think they left us all wanting more.
The host for tonight was not a weather person from the local tv station, but rather a phd who does viral videos on youtube that explain physics. yeah, totally different. He did a demo. If you hold a slinky out and let it hang down vertically. What happens when you release it. My thought was it falls down. But more specifically, what happens, is the top starts to fall, and as it descends, the slinky shrinks back together. It isn't until it reaches the bottom that the bottom part of the slinky starts to fall. yeah, not something I had ever thought about. But as I do, I think I can explain the forces. (maybe a reader can google it, find the youtube video and see if I'm right). I think it's because a slinky is a spring. When you let it hang down. At any given point, the force of the spring pulling up is equal to the mass of the spring below. It's in equilibrium. It works perfectly up and down the slinky. This is why the slinky is further stretched out at the top than the bottom, less mass. Now when you let it go, the top part is being pulled down by gravity and by the contracting of the spring. Because of the spring contracting pulls with the force of the weight below that force needs to be balanced out (equal and opposite forces), thus it supports the non falling part of the slinky. It would imply to me, that the top of the slinky falls faster than g. But that' s my guess.
The keynote was a Stanford Professor, Manu Prakash. You might have heard of him. He's lab developed the spinning toy centrifuge to separate blood in remote villages. It's both cheap and doesn't need power. He also developed a #1 Microscope. He was good, his talk illustrated important less of doing science / research beyond how great he is and cool things he has developed. Message one, It takes first hand experience to under problems. Get out into the field and see what needs to be solved. It gives better understanding of the problem and the constraints. Constraints is the 2nd message. They needed to be overcome to be able to make a difference, ie have the solution adopted. If your solution can't be adopted, you haven't made a difference. The third message is that cheapness really matters. He talked about how many kids are poor, like a billion, and how many people live under poverty. Solutions need to be cheap. It has to get out there to make a difference to lots and lots of people. It inspired me that it's a really good thing that Science of Security is so public. Because the the ideas produced are public it can help build the cybersecurity base for all.
And then representatives of each country were called to the stage with their custom made poster. While they came up they had a video of them doing/saying something. It's a nice way to end. Shows the diversity of the attendees. I believe the stats are 78 countries with Ghana and Zimbabwe attending for the very first time. Big shout out to them. There are 1778 students attending too.
Tomorrow, the plan is visit the project posters, put NSA pins out at select posters with thank-you notes from Dr. Frincke, NSA Director of Research. And decide which finalist we will interview on Wednesday., No, I don't expect we will be attending the adult mixer, gotta work.
P.S. I have figured out a lazy way to play pokemon go in my hotel room. I have noticed the GPS location becomes less accurate the further vertical I am from the ground. I have found that it's predictable. I can move my location around my block and the block next to it, by moving my iphone around my room. going from the bed to the window and back causes the game to think I've moved.3 miles. I think it must also have something to do with the unique ways the GPS signals bounce around all the glass buildings around me. Anyway, thought I share.