ITSI Activities, Events, and News

CyberLeaders focus on Influence

November 2018 — Through its ongoing grant from the Hewlett Cyber Initiative, Virginia Tech's Hume Center, School of Public and International Affairs, Pamplin College of Business have selected a cohort of ten students to participate in its CyberLeaders Program. Undergraduate students will spend a semester in Arlington focused on technology, policy, and business aspects of cyber and information conflict. A semester-long capstone project will investigate social media and influence operations in partnership with the Hamilton 68 program.

First ITSI Workshop

October 2018 — The Integrated Security Destination Area hosted the first Information, Trust, and Society Initiative (ITSI) workshop bringing together 40 faculty to discuss collaboration, research themes, and governance for ITSI. Lightning talks from researchers highlighted opportunities to collaborate across engineering, mathematics, social science, humanities, and business.

VT Selected for COMPASS Program

September 2018 — Virginia Tech faculty members were part of the Systems and Technology Research (STR) team that has been selected to participate in the DARPA COMPASS program focused on gray-zone conflict and hybrid warfare. Aaron Brantly, Justus Graham, and Walid Saad and a team of students will model adversary behavior to anticipate and counter adversary information and cyber warfare actions.

Designing Socio-Technical Systems of Truth

March 2018 — Kurt Luther chaired the Designing Socio-Technical Systems of Truth workshop at Virginia Tech. The workshop brought together over 50 faculty, student, and staff to discuss the role of social technologies in promoting truth and preventing misinformation. Computer Science, History, Sociology, Communication, and Science and Technology Studies were just some of the disciplines represented by presenters.

ITSI Research Programs

Virginia Tech's faculty have wide-ranging research programs ongoing in topics related to information, trust, and society. The university's core strength in world-class research are in the following key areas of expertise:

social computing and social media analytics;
data science for national security;
rhetoric and bias in communications;
policy and governance for communication technology; and
decision science and analytics.

Seven research centers and institutes listed below capture a large portion of the ongoing research activity. For more information see personal websites for the faculty listed below.