Teaching

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Privacy/Cybersecurity

Topics in Cybersecurity: Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT)

INFO 415 | (Last taught: Winter 2024)
Course Description: This course is geared at covering topics in cybersecurity that are not otherwise covered in the IAC curriculum. The course will center around the theme of Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) in the context of cybersecurity. Topics discussed in the class will include tools and technologies used to effect OSINT, privacy enhancing technologies (PETS), threat actors, and operational security (OPSEC). We will also discuss how emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence/ChatGPT etc., impact the offensive and defensive postures in Red and Blue teams.

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Privacy, Surveillance & Trust (Graduate)

INSC 598 | (Last taught: Autumn 2023)
Course Description: This graduate course draws on perspectives from computer and information sciences and covers key frameworks for understanding privacy, surveillance, and trust, and examines how these concepts shape, and are shaped by policies on data collection, retention, reuse, and/or deletion. The topics will encompass privacy-enhancing and privacy-eroding technologies and the ways in which personal devices, internet of things, cloud computing and other emerging technologies affect privacy. Through a combination of readings, case studies, and hands-on exercises, students will critically evaluate policies, and analyze the contextual expectations and understanding of privacy across different cultures and communities and emerge with the knowledge and tools to navigate the ethical, and technical challenges in the field of privacy.

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Special Topics in Cybersecurity: Risk Assessment

INFO 415 | (Taught: Autumn 2023; Next edition: Autumn 2024)
Course Description: This course is geared toward covering topics in cybersecurity that are not otherwise included in the information assurance and cybersecurity (IAC) curriculum. The course will center around the theme of Risk Assessment and will center around the theme of Risk Assessment and the study of tools and technologies used to support Red and Blue teams alongside associated policy guidelines. Students will analyze the influence of ransomware, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and other emerging technologies on the cybersecurity landscape. Discussions will encompass the examination of the resulting implications on people (individual users, groups, and countries), devices (from the internet of things to critical infrastructure), and domains (from healthcare to automotive security).

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Emerging Topics in Information Assurance and Cybersecurity

INFO 415 | Taught: Autumn 2022, Autumn 2021 | 2021 Syllabus
Course Description: This course examines the emerging trends in cybersecurity and information assurance. It considers implications on people (individual users, groups, and even countries), devices (from internet of things to critical infrastructure) and domains (from healthcare to artificial intelligence).

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Human Computer Interaction (HCI)

Value Sensitive Design

INFO 464 | Taught: Winter 2024 | 2024 Syllabus
Course Description: Introduction to value-sensitive design (VSD), information system design that accounts for human values in a principled and comprehensive manner. Examination of existing systems from a VSD perspective. Explores VSD research methods including conceptual, technical, empirical investigations. Key values include accountability, autonomy, consent, privacy, property, trust, sustainability

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Design Methods

INFO 360 | Taught: Winter 2022, Winter 2023 | 2023 Syllabus

Course Description: In this class we'll teach you how to think like a designer. You'll learn what designers do, how they do it, and how to do some of the things they do. We'll consider the design of user interfaces and information systems, and focus on five aspects of design thinking: empathy, definition, ideation, prototyping, and evaluation. The goal of this class is to think like a designer: how do you study and assess a problem, formulate a hypothesis, devise solutions and test them. We'll focus on the design of meaningful user interfaces and information systems that bring value to its users.

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Interdisciplinary

INSC 598 | Critical and Cultural Dimensions in Information Science

(Last taught: Autumn 2021)
Course Description: This course uses a variety of critical lenses to explore emerging topics, assess research practices, and evaluate various methodologies at the intersection of culture and technology. Through readings, written reflections and in-class discussions, students will engage with academic writings on historical and emerging themes and apply culturally-aware theories and structural frameworks for observation and analysis. Topics will include broad view of cultural aspects related to power (who wields it, how it is used/abused, harms it causes, and remedies to harm) and agency (what it looks like, how it is held/lost, how it is suppressed/amplified).

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Classes Taught at Virginia Tech

• CS 2104: Introduction to Problem Solving in Computer Science
• CS 1114: Introduction to Software Design
• CS 1054: Introduction to Programming with Java