High school students from around northwest Ohio will gather next week on the University of Toledo campus to participate in a cybersecurity workshop funded by the Air Force.
The “Assured Digital Microelectronics Workshop'' is part of the Air Force’s $30 million investment in educating a young workforce to counter the threat of cyber-attacks from foreign adversaries. Jobs like these are in high demand, Adil Zubair said, who works at the Defense Logistics Agency and will speaker for the workshop.
Mohammed Niamat, a UT electrical engineering and computer sciences professor, cited a foreboding statistic from Mr. Zubair: 60 percent of current government staff trained in such cybersecurity will retire in the next few years.
Mr. Niamat, who will lead the university’s effort, said the breadth and scope of cybersecurity are vast and challenging, and he looks forward to teaching about its implications at the high-school level.
“If you are in a Tesla car and a chip within the car has been manufactured in China and an adversary implants something in that chip and they know who is driving that car, then they can wreak havoc, cause an accident,” Dr. Niamat said. “If somebody embedded a [malicious chip] into Dick Cheney’s pacemaker, they could cause [health problems]. This is a huge problem, and we want to get kids interested.”
Dr. Niamat added that the workshop will also touch on more recent examples from the news, like this spring’s Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack that constricted gasoline supplies to the Atlantic coast.
According to a university statement, enrolled students will tour laboratories, view live demonstrations, and learn about microchip design.
Ahmad Javaid, an assistant professor focused on cybersecurity who is also working to coordinate the program, doubled down on the workshop’s importance, noting that while the government has been working to ensure there is a skilled American workforce, people capable of testing microchips’ security are still needed.
“A lot of schools do have some courses on microelectronics but when we talk to teachers ... they say that the courses are not very advanced,” Mr. Javaid said. “Students might not know about chip design, we want these courses to be developmentally appropriate, not at the level of graduate students.”
First Published June 17, 2021, 9:51 p.m.
