Title: "Zenith: Intrusion Tolerant Secret Storage using Blockchain + Threshold Cryptography”
Abstract: In the modern landscape of nation-state cyber-espionage, malicious insiders, and other forms of advanced persistent threats, information systems responsible for securing highly-sensitive digital assets and critical infrastructure must be resilient enough to operate correctly and securely in environments where certain nodes/actors may be untrustworthy or outright malicious.
In this talk we introduce Zenith, a system for providing intrusion-tolerant, cryptographically-secure secret storage and escrow using Blockchain protocols and threshold cryptography.  We will provide a high-level intro to relevant concepts in Blockchain systems and threshold cryptography, and how they can be used in concert to provide security and resiliency for practical, decentralized applications.
Speaker: JR Charles graduated from Johns Hopkins University with a Bachelor's of Science in Computer Engineering and a minor in Computer Science.  As an undergraduate, he worked as a researcher for the Johns Hopkins Distributed Systems and Networks Lab and (separately) as a technology consultant for the United States Department of Defense.  He co-founded Fractal Technology—a startup focused on enterprise mobile security—which was ultimately acquired by Sunayu in 2018.  At Sunayu, JR is an executive partner and has led numerous technological consulting and research projects, primarily in the domains of information security, distributed systems, and applied cryptography.  He is also the CEO of a new company, Curuvar, which was awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) in 2021 for research related to Distributed Ledger (DL) technology and cryptography.

Title:  Medical Systems and the New Era of Cybersecurity
Abstract: Clinical medical devices and healthcare IT systems have been profoundly affected by an evolving cybersecurity threat landscape. And as federal regulators and the healthcare industry have worked together to address these threats, a new category of cybersecurity science has emerged, one that combines cybersecurity disciplines, medical science, and regulatory science to create a new breed of cybersecurity professional. This presentation will examine the unique status of medical systems in the realm of cybersecurity, their common attack surfaces, and the challenges involved in safeguarding these systems. The future of the medical cybersecurity market will be discussed, along with the rapidly expanding career opportunities for cybersecurity professionals in this field.
Speaker: Nick Yuran served 11 years as an intelligence analyst before entering private industry, and applies his experiences in national security policy to the cyber disciplines he manages at Harbor Labs. As a serial entrepreneur, Nick has led several companies to successful exits, including companies in the satellite, enterprise networking, and cybersecurity markets. His most recent exit was the merger of medical IoT cybersecurity technology company, and he remains a strong industry advocate for medical security regulatory policies. Nick holds a BA in Slavic Languages from the University of Arizona, and a MA in Telecommunications from George Washington University.

Title:  Entrepreneurship at JHU
Abstract: Review of JHU resources for entrepreneurs, highlights of our programs and funds, including a few upcoming opportunities this academic year. Success stories of select Pava Center ventures, brainstorming exercise—identifying, launching, and iterating startup ideas!
Speaker: Paul Davidson supports student entrepreneurs as they seek to launch or expand their ventures. He manages pre-orientation programs, curricular integration, and experiential learning opportunities to create new opportunities for entrepreneurship at Johns Hopkins. He lives in Baltimore, and it excites him that student entrepreneurs will be future leaders and changemakers in the city, region, and beyond.

Title: Social Engineering

Abstract: Joe Carrigan believes that social engineering is the biggest blind spot in the security industry today. This talk opens with a story that demonstrates the physiologic reasons that social engineering attacks are successful. The talk then provides an overview of social engineering, its goals and techniques. Finally, Joe will provide a three-layer defense strategy to help thwart social engineering attacks.

Speaker: Joseph Carrigan is a Senior Cybersecurity Engineer and the co-host of the social engineering podcast Hacking Humans.  He has over 25 years of technical experience in a broad range of fields including cybersecurity, security awareness.

Topic: How to productionize Agentic AI in a highly secured environment.

Abstract: Imagine an AI agent that can autonomously navigate classified networks, synthesize intelligence from multiple sources, and make critical decisions in real-time—all while operating within the fortress-like security requirements of the Department of Defense. This isn't science fiction; it's the rapidly emerging reality of Agentic AI in high-security environments. As large language models evolve beyond simple chatbots into sophisticated autonomous agents capable of tool use, reasoning, and multi-step problem solving, they're simultaneously becoming both the ultimate force multiplier and the ultimate security challenge for organizations handling our nation's most sensitive information.

The convergence of Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), Model Context Protocol (MCP), and agentic frameworks has created unprecedented opportunities—and unprecedented risks. While commercial enterprises grapple with data leaks and prompt injections, defense organizations face threats that could compromise national security, from adversarial attacks on training data to sophisticated social engineering attempts targeting AI decision-making processes. Leading security organizations like NIST, MITRE, and OWASP have responded with comprehensive frameworks specifically designed for GenAI workloads, recognizing that traditional cybersecurity approaches are insufficient for this new paradigm. Today, we'll explore how to harness the transformative power of autonomous AI while maintaining the ironclad security posture that mission-critical operations demand.

Speaker: Larry Choun is currently an Innovation Lead at Boeing Intelligence & Analytics and works as part of a multi-disciplinary team that focuses on understanding real user problems & seizing business opportunities, designing, building, prototyping, testing, and iterating to create scalable solutions for the cloud, tactical deployment, or Enterprise Data Center using standards such as Agile, COBIT, TOGAF and ITIL. He establishes standards and best-practice for the BI&A engineering teams to follow. These standards come as playbooks, guidelines, and whitepapers. As an Innovation Lead, Larry works with his customer to upskill developers in emerging tech, rapidly create a Most Lovable Product (MLP), and showcase it to his stakeholders. In his most recent project, Larry helps to enable developers on Generative AI, Agentic AI, and Model Context Protocol to transform them from traditional developers to next-gen developers. This equips them to solve the most challenging problems for our national security.