Mr. Jason Bechtel, Software Engineer, General Dynamics, Buffalo, NY
Topic: The Integrated Incident Management System (IIMS) and how it is used to improve incident response in New York City

Mr. Jason Bechtel received his Master in Computer Science from the University of Buffalo. He has worked as a software engineer for General Dynamics since 2001. Mr. Bechtel works in the Intelligent Transportation System group focusing on emergency response to mitigate traffic.

Dr. Rui Chen, Assistant Professor, Miller College of Business, Ball State University
Topic: Data Model Development for Fire Related Extreme Events

Rui Chen is an Assistant Professor in Department of Information Systems and Operations Management at Miller College of Business in Ball State University. He previously served on the faculty of Medaille College at Buffalo, NY. He holds a B.S. and M.S. degree in Computer Science and a Ph.D. degree in Management Science and Systems from State University of New York at Buffalo. His research focuses on information assurance, technology enabled emergency management, and information technology outsourcing. His research has been published in Journal of Association for Information Systems, Decision Support Systems, Communications of the ACM, and other leading journals and conferences. He is also a Microsoft Certified Database Administrator and Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator.

Mr. Thomas X. Grasso, Jr., Supervisory Special Agent, Federal Bureau of Investigation
Topic: 21^st Century Crime: Inside the Cyber Underground

Tom Grasso began working with computers in 1993 as a network administrator. In 1998, Mr. Grasso received an appointment to the position of Special Agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). After attending new agents training at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, Mr. Grasso was transferred to the FBI's Chicago Field Office where he was assigned to the Regional Computer Crime Squad. In the fall of 2000, Mr. Grasso was transferred to the FBI's Pittsburgh Field Office and assigned to the High Technology Crimes Task Force where he served as the FBI Liaison to the Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Center (CERT/CC) at Carnegie Mellon University.

Mr. Grasso is now part of the FBI's Cyber Division and is assigned to the National Cyber-Forensics and Training Alliance (NCFTA) in Pittsburgh, a joint partnership between law enforcement, academia, and industry. Mr. Grasso is a 1991 graduate of the State University of New York at Buffalo, where he majored in Geological Sciences and minored in Music.

Dr. Daniel Hess, Associate Professor, Urban and Regional Planning, UB
Topic: Enhancements to Hospital Resiliency: Improving Emergency Planning for Extreme Events

Daniel Hess is an Associate Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at UB.
Dr. Hess consults with federal, state, and local agencies so that his research can lead to more effective planning. Dr. Hess recently was part of a team that explored design concepts and programs for adding transit-oriented development along Buffalo's Metro Rail corridor. He currently has a grant from the Mineta Transportation Institute to investigate the barriers that keep older adults from riding traditional fixed-route transit. He also won a grant from the Federal Transit Administration to investigate how public involvement can be used to expand alternative transportation financing schemes. He is on the Board of Advisors, Center for Transportation Excellence; Buffalo Olmsted Parks Conservancy Design Review Committee. He has also recieved the Chester Rapkin Prize, the UB Exceptional Scholar Award and is a Dwight D. Eisenhower Fellow

Dr. Tejaswini Herath, Brock University, Ontario, Canada
Topic: Information Security in Organizations: Empirical Examination of Security Practices in Western New York

Tejaswini Herath is an assistant professor in the Faculty of Business at Brock University, Canada. She received her Ph.D. from Department of Management Science and Systems at State University of New York, Buffalo (UB). Previously she worked as a systems analyst and a part time lecturer at University of Northern British Columbia, Canada. Her primary research interests are in Information Assurance and include topics such as information security and privacy, diffusion of information assurance practices, economics of information security and risk management. Her work has been accepted or published in the Journal of Management Information Systems, Decision Support Systems, European Journal of Information Systems, Information Systems Management and International Journal of Business Governance and Ethics, and International Journal of E-Government Research. In addition, she has published several book chapters and presented at leading conferences. She was the recipient of the Best Paper Award at the 30th McMaster World Congress (2009), and the recipient of the UB Ph.D. Student Achievement Award (2007-2008).

Dr. Victor Piotrowski, Lead Program Director, NSF
Topic: New Initiatives in Cyber Security Education

Dr. Victor Piotrowski is a Lead Program Director of the Division of Undergraduate Education at National Science Foundation. At NSF, he is responsible for the Federal Cyber Service: Scholarship for Service (SFS), and the Course, Curriculum, and Laboratory Improvement (CCLI) programs. Before joining NSF, he served as a Professor and Chair of the Computer Science Department at the University of Wisconsin-Superior. He previously held faculty positions at the North Dakota State University and at the Institute of Informatics in Poland. Dr. Piotrowski has a 10-year experience in research, teaching and consulting in Information Assurance (IA) and holds several IA certifications including Certified Information Systems Security Professional and SANS Institute GIAC Incident Handler.

Mr. Gregory W. Skibitsky, Commissioner, Erie County Department of Emergency Services
Topic: Flight 3407

Greg Skibitsky serves the County of Erie (Buffalo), New York as Commissioner of Emergency Services, overseeing the Divisions of Disaster Preparedness, Fire Safety and Emergency Medical Services. His Department serves a community of nearly one million people with 97 fire departments, seven independent EMS providers and some 6,000 first responders. He is a certified EMT/Paramedic and the past Chief of the East Amherst Fire Department. As Deputy Commissioner of EMS, he coordinated the deployment of 32 EMS units to Ground Zero following the attacks of September 11, 2001. Most recently, he coordinated the on-scene operations of all Local and County resources involved in the recovery efforts from the crash of Continental Flight 3407 in Clarence Center NY. Greg Skibitsky has 35 years of combined experience in Emergency Services.

Dr. Paul Thompson, General Dynamics, Buffalo, NY
Topic: Semantic Hacking and Information Infrastructure Protection

Paul Thompson received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. He was an assistant professor at the College of Information Studies at Drexel University for two years before working as a research scientist at PRC, Inc., and West Publishing Company, now part of Thomson . Reuters. Since 2001, he has been a researcher and research professor at Dartmouth College in several departments and affiliated institutes, including the Thayer School of Engineering, Computer Science, the Computational Genetics Laboratory at the Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, the Institute for Security Technology Studies, and the Institute for Information Infrastructure Protection.

His research interests include: probabilistic information retrieval, automatic text classification, deception detection, data and text mining, computer security, critical infrastructure protection, and natural language understanding, including information extraction and question answering. He is currently chief computational linguist at General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems in Buffalo, NY.