WiCyS 2020 - Canceled

COVID-19 UPDATE

The decision to cancel the WiCyS 2020 conference was a tough one, but a necessary one since travel restrictions made the event no longer viable. We are also comforted knowing our WiCyS community is not being put in harm's way with the novel coronavirus, for that would be a burden we could not bear.

WiCyS is the only non-profit membership organization with national reach that is dedicated to bringing together women in cybersecurity from academia, research and industry to share knowledge, experience, networking and mentoring. The initiative was created through an NSF grant (Award #1303441) by Dr. Ambareen Siraj at Tennessee Tech University six years ago, and has grown into a wonderful alliance among academia, government and industry.

Each year, WiCyS holds an annual conference with local host college partners. The WiCyS Conference is an excellent opportunity for companies to connect with women students and candidates to recruit them into the field! 50% of our attendees are students looking for employment who have been accepted through the scholarship program that sponsorships help to support. In addition to students, the other 50% is made up of experienced leaders, professionals in the cybersecurity field who are willing to share their knowledge and expertise with others and mentor those interested in cyber careers. There are many ways to participate in WiCyS - as volunteers, speakers, sponsors and supporters.

Because of the enormous gap between available talent and cybersecurity jobs (by some accounts it's 300,000 by the year 2020), the mission of Women in CyberSecurity makes so much sense - to broaden participation in cyber by recruiting, retaining and advancing women in the field of cybersecurity, and improve on the very low 11% statistic of women in cybersecurity jobs.

CONFERENCE CHAIR

Dr. Ambareen Siraj
Director, Cybersecurity Education, Research and Outreach Center
Professor, Computer Science, Tennessee Tech

PROGRAM CO-CHAIRS:

• Celeste Matarazzo - Data Science Expert, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
• Dr. Ashley Podhradsky - Associate Dean, Beacom College of Computer and Cyber Sciences at Dakota State University

PROGRAM COMMITTEE:

• Dr. Dalal Alharthi - Faculty and Cloud Security Engineer
• Dr. Garima Bajwa - Assistant Professor, Capitol Technology University
• Dr. Shankar Banik - Professor, The Citadel
• Dr. Emily Darraj - AI Cybersecurity Institute, President, CEO
• Kalika Dennis Sr. - Information Security Risk Analyst, Thomson Reuters
• Deepti Gupta - PhD student at University of Texas, San Antonio
• Lora Vaughn - CISO, Simmons Bank
• Eric Chan-Tin, Ph.D. - Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science, Loyola University Chicago
• Sandra McLeod - Sr. Manager, Cisco Systems
• Dr. Kelley Misata - CEO and Founder, Sightline Security
• Abhilasha Bhargav-Spantzel - Principal Engineer, Intel Corporation
• Dr. April L. Tanner - Associate Professor/Graduate Program Director of Computer Science, Jackson State University
• Dr. Denis Ulybyshev - Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science, Tennessee Tech University
• Dr. Jeong Yang - Texas A&M University-San Antonio
• Dr. Chuan Yue - Professor, Colorado School of Mines