Marco Carvalho Named Co-director of Harris Institute for Information Assurance

MELBOURNE, FLA.—Marco Carvalho, associate professor of computer sciences at Florida Institute of Technology, has joined Professor Richard Ford as co-director of the Harris Institute for Information Assurance at the university. Ford has been the original director since the institute was established in 2003 through a $5 million gift from Harris Corporation. The institute focuses on developing advanced solutions to help solve the global information security problem. “Basically, I will concentrate on managing outreach and education and Marco will concentrate on managing the research activities,” said Ford. “We have collaborated very successfully for more than four years in numerous projects and I foresee that this will be an excellent arrangement, which will help us continue to grow, promote and expand the Institute.” Since 2012 Carvalho received more than $2.8 million in funded research projects from the Department of Defense and Industry. He leads a research team at the Intelligent Communications and Information Systems Laboratory at Florida Tech where he is principal investigator in several research projects. The lab closely collaborates with the Harris Institute, government, industry and several other research organizations. His primary research interests are in computer security, computer networks and distributed information systems. “Research and education are two very important pillars for national cyber security,” said Carvalho. “We believe that working together we can advance both areas, and expand our collaborations to continue growing the Institute.” The Harris Institute’s mission is to develop solutions for a wide range of real-world commercial and government applications. Moving forward, Dr. Ford and Carvalho’s vision for the Institute is to create a national center of excellence in research and education for Cyber Security in Melbourne, leveraging the university’s local and national high-tech partners. Already recognized as a local center for ongoing workforce development in information assurance, “the Institute continues to grow its research activities, collaboration and partnerships with other organizations, on its way to become one of the top national organizations in Cyber Security research and education,” said Ford.