David K.A. Mordecai and Samantha Kappagoda Participated in NYU CSAW 2019

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David K.A. Mordecai and Samantha Kappagoda were invited to participate as judges at NYU Tandon School of Engineering’s Sixteenth Annual Cyber Security Awareness Week (CSAW) Competition, November 6-8, 2019 at the MetroTech Center in Brooklyn, NY. RiskEcon® Lab @ Courant Institute has proudly co-sponsored this competition since 2018.

Academic entrants of all levels, from Post-Doctoral fellows and Ph.D. candidates to high school students took part in the three-day cybersecurity event, which was made up of several distinct competitions including the following:

  • Applied Research Competition
  • Capture the Flag
  • Embedded Security Challenge
  • Hack 3D
  • HackML
  • Logic Locking
  • Policy Competition
  • Red Team Competition
  • Security Quiz

David K.A. Mordecai and Samantha Kappagoda Participated in NYU CSAW 2019

David Mordecai and Samantha Kappagoda joined the panel of judges for the HackML competition, while Dr. Mordecai also served as a judge for the Applied Research competition.

The HackML competition challenged teams to design new, more powerful backdoor attacks on neural networks, and to develop novel defenses and detections. The Applied Research award reviewed papers on any topic related to the application or implementation of security technologies or security systems published or camera-ready between September 1, 2018 and August 31, 2019.

About CSAW
CSAW, established at NYU Tandon School of Engineering (originally Polytechnic Institute of New York) in 2003, is the largest student-run cyber security event in the world, featuring international competitions, workshops, and industry events. Competitions are developed by undergraduate and graduate students associated with the OSIRIS Lab and the Center for Cyber Security at NYU Tandon School of Engineering in collaboration with student teams from across the globe. These students represent some of the leading security programs and academic institutions worldwide. The CSAW competition now runs annually in five other countries; at the Grenoble INP-Esisar in France, the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur, the Ben-Gurion University and University of Haifa in Israel, NYU Abu Dhabi in Mena and University Iberoamericana Mexico City in Mexico.


About NYU Tandon School of Engineering
NYU Tandon School of Engineering is a comprehensive school of engineering, applied sciences, technology and research, and is rooted in a 165-year tradition of invention, innovation and entrepreneurship. The institution, founded in 1854, is the nation’s second-oldest private engineering school. In addition to NYU’s main campus in Manhattan, NYU Tandon in downtown Brooklyn also offers programs at sites throughout the region and around the globe. Globally, NYU Tandon has programs in Israel, China and is an integral part of NYU’s campus in Abu Dhabi. NYU Tandon’s mission is to excel as a leading high-quality research institution engaged in education, discovery, and innovation with social, intellectual, and economic impact in the New York region, the nation, and the world. For more information, visit: https://engineering.nyu.edu.


About RiskEcon® Lab @ Courant Institute
The mission of RiskEcon® Lab for Decision Metrics @ Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences NYU is the development of experimental testbeds and analytics that employ high-dimensional datasets from innovative sources by applying a range of computational and analytical methods to commercial and industrial sensor networks and edge computing embedded systems, focusing primarily on research and development (R&D) of remote- and compressed- sensing, anomaly detection, forensic analytics and statistical process control. By employing applied computational statistics within the context of robust and scalable data analytic solutions, the goal is robust and reliable integration of machine learning with signal processing for measurement and control, in order to conduct research fundamental to large-scale, real-world questions in risk and liability management.


RiskEcon® Lab enables, facilitates and coordinates academic research focusing on these patterns and trends, through the development of commercially-viable, analytic applications employing computational statistical tools in conjunction with innovative and non-traditional data structures. In addition, the lab’s activities involve the advancement of applied mathematical statistics and computational economics, through interdisciplinary post-doctoral, postgraduate, graduate research and education in data science and social computing.


RiskEcon® Lab for Decision Metrics was established in 2011 at Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, an independent division of New York University (NYU). Courant is considered to be one of the world’s leading mathematics educational and scientific research centers, and has been ranked first in research in applied mathematics. RiskEcon® Lab is the cornerstone of the Computational Economics and Algorithmic Data Analytics (CEcADA) cooperative at New York University, established concurrently in 2011.