GenCyber

Dr. Li-Jen Lester, Associate Professor of Computer Science, will oversee all GenCyber Training Center activities including hiring program staff, managing recruitment and program duration, ensuring safety on campus, overseeing program budget, co-teaching ethics and robotics drones' modules, and coordinating learning plan development with the instructors and K-12 pedagogical expert. She has been in the leadership team teaching masters and doctoral programs in Instructional System Design Technology (ISDT), which has graduated more than 250 P-16 teachers from these ISDT programs in the past 13 years and built a well-supported network with surrounding community partners. She taught more than five years of robotics design and programming to twenty-four Middle and High school teachers and students to prepare them for the Boosting Engineering Science Technology (BEST) Robotics Competitions. She also has been teaching a required core course: Professionalism and Ethics for the past three years. She has been actively serving the surrounding independent school districts to promote STEM curriculums and mentoring their robotics programs. From 2018 to 2021, she served as the board member of Information System and Computing Educators and chaired several international conferences.

Dr. Qingzhong Liu, Associate Professor of Computer Science, will serve as the lead instructor to oversee the learning plan including developing the online 30 hours learning modules, implementing professional development for other instructors and program staff, providing feedback to instructors, and carrying responsibilities of the instructional leadership. Dr. Liu has been the team leader for cybersecurity research at Sam Houston State University. He is currently supervising three Ph.D. students. His primary research interest includes AI and applications, multimedia security and digital forensics, cybersecurity, bioinformatics. His study has been funded by the US Army, National Institute of Justice, National Science Foundation, and National Institute of Health. In 2020, He was selected by Stanford University as one of the top 2% of scientists in Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing. Since 2010, the subjects primarily taught by Dr. Liu in cybersecurity include Digital Forensics and Information Assurance Fundamentals I, Digital Forensics and Information Assurance Fundamentals II, Cryptography and Steganography, Network Security, Operating Systems Security, Multimedia Forensics, Information Security, Mobile Forensics, File System Forensics, Deep Learning, and Computational Forensics.

Dr. Bing Zhou, Associate Professor of Computer Science, will serve as an instructor for a few of the learning modules. She has been actively teaching and training students in computer science and cybersecurity for more than 10 years. Several of her former MS students have joined Ph.D. programs. She was recognized with the Faculty and Student Team Awards from the Center for Enhancing Undergraduate Research Experiences and Creative Activities (EURECA, SHSU) in 2016 and 2018. Dr. Zhou is also an impactful scholar in the professional community. Four of her journal articles are recognized as the top 1% highly cited papers by the Web of Science. Her research interests include Database Security, Database Forensics, Big Data Analytics, and Soft Computing. Dr. Zhou served as computer programming consultant of Region 6 Educational Service Center’s WeTeachCS Academy and offered free programming lessons to high school students in Conroe ISD during the 2017-2019 summer. In addition, she has been involved in programs to increase the representation of women in STEM.

Dr. Amar Rasheed, Assistant Professor of Computer Science, will serve as an instructor for a few of the learning modules. Dr. Rasheed has more than 15 years of research and teaching experience. He has held multiple research and teaching positions before joining Sam Houston State University in Spring 2020. He worked as an assistant professor and was the director of the IoT and Embedded Systems Security Lab at Armstrong State University, where he conducted and managed multiple undergraduate and graduate research projects in the areas of Authentications, Industrial Control Systems, and Data Privacy protocols for IoT systems. His research works were published in high-quality IEEE Transaction papers and conference proceedings. Dr. Rasheed also held a position as a postdoctoral fellowship in the Information Science and Technology Division at Applied Research Lab at Pennsylvania State University. During his appointment at ARL, Dr. Rasheed was able to develop multiple key distribution algorithms for stationary and mobile unmanned vehicle systems, his works were funded by the Air Force Lab.

Dr. Ashley Brittain, Clinical Assistant Professor in the School of Teaching and Learning will serve as the K-12 Pedagogical Expert. The vision of the School of Teaching and Learning is to prepare leaders to impact a diverse and evolving world where they offer undergraduate degrees in science and art, 8 content area-specific certificates, 6 master’s degree programs, 3 professional certifications, and one doctoral program. Dr. Brittain has delivered professional development for K-12 teachers in all content areas and has 5 years of experience teaching elementary and secondary math and elementary science. Dr. Brittain has also served as a Campus Intervention Coach for 3 years prior to joining the Sam Houston State University faculty. Dr. Brittain’s pedagogical knowledge and teacher-coaching experience will be invaluable in mentoring participants on their incorporation of cybersecurity within their curriculum.

Two graduate students from the SHSU, Computer Science Department, will serve as camp staff during the Summer One-Week Workshop. Their main responsibilities are to assist in each instructor’s teaching modules, manage lab equipment, organize the group experiments, and ensure the safety of participants. The lead instructor will provide professional training before they join the Summer One-Week Workshop.