Winners of the 2019 NSA Research Directorate Awards at ISEF 2019
Phoenix, AZ - On Thrusday Night, May 16, 2019, The National Security Agency Executive Director, Mr. Harry Coker, and NSA Researcher and Science of Security and Privacy (SoS) Technical Lead, Dr. Adam Tagert, presented the NSA Research Directorate Awards to 10 outstanding high school scientists. These students were finalists at the 2019 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF). An Additional 7 students were selected for an honorable mention from NSA. ISEF 2019 was the fifth consecutive year NSA and SoS have participated at ISEF.
ISEF is the most prestigious pre-college science fair in the world. This year was the largest ever; nearly 1850 students haling from 80 countries, territories and regions. To compete at ISEF, a student must win a spot from from an affiliated fair. These fairs are competitions for students from specific counties, states, or countries. ISEF is the "super bowl" for STEM.
At ISEF 2019, a team of NSA researchers, experts in fields of cybersecurity, material science, communications, machine learning and mathematics, selected students for NSA awards in the categories of Mathematics, Material Science, Cyber Pioneer, and in Science of Security. NSA recognizes outstanding research in this field to encourage student scientists to engage in STEM fields and in projects that have national security impact.
| Science of Security | Mathematics |
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1st ($3,000) – Suha Hussain from Jamaica, NY – Detecting Privacy Violations in Children’s Apps Using Hardware Performance Counters. |
1st ($1,500) – Daniel Santiago from Mayaguez, Puerto Rico – Loop Spaces, P-Curvature, and Homotopy |
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2nd ($1,000) – Gabrielle Liu from Brentwood, TN – Weight Friction: A Simple method to Overcome Catastrophic Forgetting and Enable Continual Learning in Neural Networks |
2nd ($750) – John Piwinsky from San Antonio, TX – On the Application of Heat Diffusion across a Manifold for Dimensionality Reduction |
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2nd ($1,000) – Divya Amirtharaj from Portland, OR – A Secure Implementation of Mendelian Randomization via Multi-Party Computation |
2nd ($750) – Ana Maria Perez from Albuquerque NM – Classifying Magic Squares and Their Associated Symmetries Using a Chord Diagram Approach |
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2nd ($1,000) – Alice Guo from Morgantown, WV – Protection of Deep Neural Networks against Adversarial Attacks with Application to Facial Recognition |
Honorable Mention ($0) – Aayush Karan from Milwaukee, WI – Generating Set for Nonzero Determinant Links under Skein Relation |
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Honorable Mention ($0) – Adam Kelly from Dublin, Ireland – Improved Gate Level Simulation of Quantum Circuits |
Honorable Mention ($0) – Brendon Matusch from Ontario Canada – Improving Particle Classification in WIMP Dark Matter Detection Experiments Using Neural Networks |
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Honorable Mention ($0) – Advay Koranne from Portland OR – Non-Periodic Pseudo-Random Number Generator Using Sinai Billiards |
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Honorable Mention ($0) – Michael Brockman from Bartlesville, OK – The Next Artificial Intelligence Revolution: AI Making Decisions without Human Models or Knowledge of Rules to Create Completely Independent Solutions
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| Cyber Pioneer | Material Science |
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1st ($1,000) – Kevin Meng of Plano, TX – Looking through Walls with Artificial Intelligence: An innovative Solution for Real-Time Retrieval of the Human Figure behind Visual Obstruction |
1st ($1,000) – Kaitlyn Zuravel from Fayetteville, NC – Glue Busters II: The Effects of Accelerated Cure Time on the Ultimate Shear Strength and Efficiency of CA and PVA Glue |
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2nd ($1,000) – Milidu Jayaweera from Albuquerque, NM – A Game of Jamming: A Multi-Agent Game Theoretic Learning Based Cognitive Anti-Jamming Communication System to Combat an AI Jammer |
Honorable Mention ($0) – Jacqueline Prawira from Mountain House, CA – OceanVioplas: The Plasticity of Marine Exoskeleton-Inspired Materials and Their Degradability in the Enviroment (Soil and Seaweater/Saltwater) |
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Honorable Mention ($0) – Ryan McDowell from Millersville, MD – Should I Trust What’s in My Computer? Using Current Draw Analysis to Identify Malicious Firmware in Solid Sate Drivers |