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Michigan Technological University’s campus gathers important research and creates significant innovations. One of the areas the university has focused on is counterintelligence.
While Michigan Tech and federal agencies cannot always disclose the advancements faculty and students work on, university leadership can boast about prestigious awards their research leads to. On Friday, the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency awarded the university the prestigious Donnelly Award.
“Basically, Michigan Tech has come out at the top of the heap when it comes to what it has done, how it has done it, and most importantly, how it is continuing to move forward. This is not a one-and-done, and then you move on to the next. This is a continuing, ongoing effort because we know that counterintelligence is only going to get more complex as technologies change,” said Michigan 1st District Representative Jack Bergman.
DCSA Assistant Director for Counterintelligence and Insider Threat Andrew Lochli adds that the award recognizes work by five universities across the country working toward advancing the nation’s ability to protect itself from digital threats.
He says a major challenge right now deals with the rapid growth and innovation of technology, particularly artificial intelligence.
“That could be a much longer conversation and just getting into the cyber realm and everything is one or two clicks away in this day and age,” said Lochli. “Keeping pace with the technology is a huge challenge and we have to be very cognizant of that because our adversaries are aware of that too. So that is a big challenge. But keeping pace with that threat in the cyber domain is very critical to all of our success.”
Michigan Tech Vice President of Research Andrew Barnard adds that artificial intelligence has many benefits, but it’s important to remain cautious of how it is used.
“As we explore those avenues, we certainly need to be careful about how we’re using it in terms of securing our data and securing our personnel as well, not putting our people in adverse situations. So we take a lot of pride in our counterintelligence efforts here. Sean Hagen is our Chief Information Security Officer, and he’s doing a great job,” said Barnard, “of working with everyone who’s doing AI research on campus, as well as anyone doing other types of computing research to secure our data and make sure that we’re following all of the rules that we need to follow, as well as to protect our people.”
110th District State Representative Greg Markkanen and Michigan First District Representative Jack Bergman are proud to share with others the work done and research taking place on campus.
“I’ve had a colleague that was at a conference in Orlando before the storm here and half the engineers there at the conference were from Michigan Tech or had attended Michigan Tech,” said 110th District State Representative Greg Markkanen. “Michigan Tech is just making an impact across the country and around the world and this is, you know, the caliber of this award just raises that even higher.”
The Donnelly Award honors John Donnelly, director of investigative services from 1988 to 1996.
Those interested in learning more about counterintelligence research or programs within the College of Computing at Michigan Technological University can find more information here.
