Communications Security, Privacy and CyberethicsWestern Engineering

People

To enable the proposed collaborative training, each member of the CREATE team has been carefully selected to ensure the needed research expertise. A very strong inter-disciplinary team with diverse, yet complementary expertise, including communications, computing, software engineering, law, psychology and industrial applications, has been engaged for the proposed collaborative research and training.  Members of this team have produced approximately 2,000 publications, 20 patents, and 500 trainees and been involved in numerous research projects.

Existing partnerships with our industrial partners and within the CREATE team, combined with each member’s depth of specialization in all related fields, will provide a unique approach to the creation, validation and commercialization of new secure communication technologies.

Principal Investigator

The Director of the CSPC Program, Dr. Xianbin Wang, is a professor at Western University and Canada Research Chair in Wireless Communications.

His current research interests include adaptive wireless systems and mobile applications, communications security, and distributed computing systems. Dr. Wang has over 200 peer-reviewed journal and conference papers on various communication system design issues, in addition to 24 granted and pending patents and several standard contributions. He was the recipient of three IEEE Best Paper Awards including one from IEEE ICC 2012 on physical layer security. Dr. Wang is a Distinguished Lecturer of IEEE. He currently serves as an Editor/Associate Editor for three IEEE journals.

Co-Principal Investigators

Dr. Michael Bauer is a professor of Computer Science at Western. He was Principal Investigator for the CFI project that initially funded the creation of SHARCNET – a multi-university high performance computing grid. Dr. Bauer’s is internationally recognized for his work on the use of policies in the management of distributed systems and cloud computing systems. He has published more than 220 refereed articles and has supervised more than 70 graduate students. Dr. Bauer will be involved in all themes and lead the studies on smart applications of security technologies in cloud computing.

Dr. Victor Leung is a professor at UBC and TELUS Mobility Research Chair in Advanced Telecommunications Engineering. His research scope of the research includes design, evaluation, and analysis of network architectures, protocols, and network management, control, and internetworking strategies for reliable, efficient, and cost effective communications. Dr. Leung will co-lead theme B.

Dr. Jean-Yves Chouinard is a professor of ECE at Laval University and past Associate Dean Academic. His research interests are communication theory, wireless security, channel modelling, and coding. He is the author or co-author of around 200 journal, conference papers and technical reports, co-editor of a book on information theory and its applications, and co-author of book chapters on software defined radio and multicarrier modulation. He has collaborated intensively with Dr. Wang over the past 10 years.

Dr. Mark Perry is jointly appointed to the Faculty of Law and the Department of Computer Science at Western, and is internationally renowned in technology law. He researches at the intersection of law and technology, with particular emphasis on intellectual property rights, privacy, cloud computing, and software licensing. He will contribute on the legal and ethical perspectives in the CREATE program.

Dr. Abdallah Shami is a professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Western. His current research interests are in the area of design and optimization of wireless communication systems and performance analysis of broadband optical/wireless access networks. Dr. Shami will be able to explore new communications protocols design in Theme B, D and E for network security enhancement.

Dr. Serguei Primak is a professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Western. His research interests include communication system performance evaluation, non-Rayleigh fading simulation, stochastic differential equations and their applications, statistical electromagnetics, and wireless security. Dr. Primak will work on physical layer security enhancement in the CREATE.

Dr. Hanan Lutfiyya is a professor and current Chair of Department of Computer Science at Western. Her expertise includes self-adaptive and self-managing systems, autonomic computing, policies, and clouds. She is recognized for her pioneering work in policy-based management.  Dr. Lutfiyya is a past member of the NSERC Discovery Grant Committee, and a past member and Chair of an NSERC Strategic Grants Committee. She has also received a Western Faculty Scholar Award. Dr. Lutfiyya will be involved in Themes B to D in this project.

Dr Jagath Smarabandu is a professor in software engineering at Western. His research interests include pattern recognition and artificial intelligence. He will be able to enable the CREATE team for the development security anomaly detection algorithm and software in communication networks.

Dr. Weiming Shen is a Senior Research Scientist with the National Research Council and an Adjunct Professor in software engineering at Western. He has been working on intelligent software agents and their applications to secure sensor networks in intelligent manufacturing. He has published two books and more than 280 papers in scientific journals and international conferences, and co-edited five books and 10 conference proceedings in related areas. Dr. Shen will be involved in research theme B and C.

Dr. Cheryl Forchuk is a professor at Faculty of Health Sciences and Schulich School of Medicine (Psychiatry) at Western. Dr. Forchuk’s research explores issues related to psychiatry, behavior and chronic mental illnesses. Dr. Forchuk will be able to help the CREATE team better understand the relationship between human behaviour and cyber security.