Keeping the Frontier Endless: Academia, Government, and Industry Driving Innovation for National Security

David Grover is currently serving as Senior Director for Cyber Initiatives at Baylor University in Waco, Tx. His role is to spearhead cybersecurity education, training, research, and community engagement efforts at Baylor University. He is also the Director of the Central Texas Cyber Hub, a consortium bringing higher education, industry, government and the broader cyber ecosystem together to develop solutions that address national cyber workforce needs in Central Texas. David spent over 27 years serving the US Government, most recently as the Lead Industry and Academic Engagement Officer in Austin, Texas for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA). His team led the strategic plans for NGA immersion into the local innovation ecosystem bringing awareness of NGA’s efforts to the commercial and academic communities to meet the innovation challenges of the agency. David has a Bachelors degree in Engineering from Baylor University and a Masters of Aeronautical Science from Embry-Riddle University.

Ms. Karen E. Roth is the Deputy Director of AFWERX, a technology directorate of the Air Force Research Laboratory and the innovation arm of the Department of the Air Force. She is an experienced technologist in cyber, AI and digital engineering with a passion for advocating for women in STEM. She has taken her proven skills in strategic thinking, communication, and partnership development to create a global ecosystem for the Air Force. She aids the director in the strategy and execution of $1.4B per year to bring cutting-edge American ingenuity from small businesses and start-ups to address the most pressing DAF challenges. As a senior acquisition officer, Ms. Roth is responsible for developing partnerships and strategic initiatives to help strengthen the U.S. defense industrial base and drive faster technology transition.

Dr. John Beieler leads Science and Technology efforts within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and identifies ways to create strategic advantage.

Dr. Nadya T. Bliss is a computer scientist focused on national security research and engineering, with specific expertise in cybersecurity and graph algorithms. As the Executive Director of the Global Security Initiative at Arizona State University, she leads a pan-university organization advancing research, education, and other programming at the intersection of technology and national security. GSI centers focus on cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, data visualization and analytics, and geopolitical strategic competition. Prior to leading GSI, Dr. Bliss spent time as Assistant Vice President, Research Strategy at ASU and a decade in various positions at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, most recently as the founding Group Leader of the Computing and Analytics Group. Dr. Bliss is a Professor of Practice and graduate faculty in ASU’s School of Computing and Augmented Intelligence. Actively involved in national service, she currently chairs the Computing Community Consortium. Bliss also serves on multiple National Academies engagements, including the Cyber Resilience Forum and a Standing Committee on Transformative Science and Technology for the Department of Defense. In July 2024, she was appointed as a member of the National Academies’ Army Research Laboratory Technical Assessment Board (ARLTAB) and as chair of its Panel on Assessment of Network, Cyber, and Computational Sciences. She is a past chair and current steering committee member of DARPA’s Information Science and Technology Study Group.

Dr. Matt Gaston is the director of the Artificial Intelligence Division at the Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute. He also holds an appointment as an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Software and Societal Systems Department in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. As the director of the AI Division, Dr. Gaston leads a team of researchers, engineers, and innovators who assist the US Department of Defense in developing and using AI capabilities that are reliable, responsible, safe, fair, and transparent. He is a leader of the community-wide National AI Engineering Initiative focused on establishing and growing the discipline of AI Engineering. Dr. Gaston has over 25 years of experience at the intersection of advanced technology development and national security including serving in the United States Air Force, ten years at the National Security Agency, serving on advisory boards for research at national laboratories, and leading research and development activities across the community. Before joining the SEI, Dr. Gaston was the director of research at Viz, a business area of General Dynamics C4 Systems (GDC4S), where he led research activities for the Battle Management System Division. During this time, he also served as a member of the External Advisory Board for Sandia National Laboratory’s Network Grand Challenge, which focused on novel techniques and computing paradigms for large-scale network analysis applications in cybersecurity, counter-proliferation, and other national security issues.