INFORMS Boston Chapter Talk - Robust Mission Network Analysis by Les Servi - Wednesday May 23rd 2018 at 6-9 PM at Bentley University
Our next INFORMS Boston meeting will be Wednesday, May 23rd, 2018. This meeting will feature a talk titled Robust Mission Network Analysis by Les Servi, the Chair of the INFORMS Boston Chapter. Dr. Servi will be presenting his ongoing work with Damon Frezza researching and developing new optimization techniques that hedge against mission network uncertainty.
Date/Time:
Wednesday, May 23rd, 2018
6:00 pm Reception and light snacks
6:30 pm- 9:00 pm Talk
Location:
Smith Building Rm. 210, Bentley University. See attached for the details.
Talk Abstract:
Robust Mission Network Analysis
Cyber security and asset protection efforts are becoming more difficult as technological advances broaden the scope and scale of integrated systems. Mission networks organize and quantify the dependencies between cyber assets in the system. This system representation allows for valuation of the impact of assets on system performance to aid preemptive and reactive decision making. Mission network representations have inherent uncertainty due to the subjective nature of t heir creation.
This uncertainty requires robust valuation methods for informed decisions which is frequently ignored. We address this omission by presenting optimization techniques that hedge against mission network uncertainty. This approach produces actionable information for the defensive network host, such as optimal reconfiguration to bolster the network or identifying optimal nodes to harden, and equally actionable information for the offensive adversary.
Bios:
Dr. Servi received his Ph.D. in engineering from Harvard University, worked at Bell Laboratories and GTE (now Verizon) Laboratories pursuing telecommunication research, served 1 year as a visiting scientist at Harvard University and MIT, and worked at MIT Lincoln in the areas of military communication and ISR. He currently is a Group Leader at The MITRE Corporation. At MITRE he has contributed to a diversity of areas including the analysis of social media, portfolio analysis, cyber security, and evaluating Human Social Culture Behavior (HSCB) government sponsored projects. He currently runs a Cyber Analytics project and a Health Analytics project. In 2010-11, he served on a Defense Science Board task force on Counterinsurgency and in 2016 served on a second summer Defense Science Board task force about Constrained Military Operations. In 2017, he received a Certification of Appreciation from the DNI James Clapper.
Dr. Servi has an extensive publication record in Operations Research and 11 patents derived from his analysis. He has been very active in INFORMS and served on its Board of Directors for 6 years. In 2004 he was named Fellow of INFORMS. In 2013 he became the founding Chair of the new INFORMS Social Media Analytics subdivision. He was previously Chair of the INFORMS Telecommunication Society, the INFORMS Applied Probability Society and is currently the chair of the INFORMS Boston Chapter. He has been an editor of Operations Research, Management Science, INFORMS Journal of Computing, and has served on Ph.D. thesis committees at Harvard University, MIT and Boston University.
Damon Frezza received his bachelor's degrees in Physics and Mathematics from Bucknell University and received his master's degree in Operations Research from the Georgia Institute of Technology. He spent 2 years researching Astronomy at university. He is currently an Operations Research analyst at The MITRE Corporation. At MITRE he has contributed to projects in cyber security, critical infrastructures, data visualization, and policy and decision-making analysis.
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Daniel Rice
Senior Vice President and Director of R&D
Technology Solutions Experts, Inc.
Natick MA
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