Emerging Topics in AI Safety and Security

Speakers: Andrew Schoka (Hardshell), Dr. Hunter Moore (Hardshell), Emma Meno (VTNSI), John Elder V (Elder Research Inc.)

Andrew Schoka is a former U.S. Army Cyber Warfare Officer and the co-founder and CEO of Hardshell. He holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial and systems engineering from Virginia Tech, a master’s degree in Cybersecurity from Georgia Tech, and is completing his MBA from the University of Virginia. Andrew’s military career includes a variety of cyber and special operations assignments with U.S. Cyber Command, the Cyber National Mission Force (CNMF), U.S. Army Cyber Command (ARCYBER), and U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM). He has extensive experience in cyber operations supporting critical national and global events including the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election, the 2021 Russia-Ukraine crisis, and the 2023 Middle Eastern crisis. A published author in multiple military and cybersecurity venues, Andrew is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and regularly consults for cyber organizations across the U.S. government and private sector. He has previously guest lectured on cybersecurity and cyber operations at institutions including the University of Maryland, the University of Virginia, and the National Intelligence University.

Dr. Moore is the Founder, CTO, and Chair of Hardshell. He holds a Ph.D. in Systems Engineering, with expertise spanning AI security, machine learning, and autonomous systems.

He has over five years of experience advising the U.S. Department of Defense on AI security, including contributions to foundational policy and protocol development at the Joint AI Center and the Chief Digital and AI Office. His work has encompassed domains such as trustworthy and robust AI, generative AI, predictive and explanatory modeling, reinforcement learning, human systems, and systems engineering of autonomous systems. He has also served as Principal Investigator (PI) and Co-Principal Investigator (co-PI) on multiple successfully funded grants.

A published author and recognized contributor in AI security, Dr. Moore is a frequent presenter at leading forums such as the International System Dynamics Conference and TechNet Europe. He has taught AI-related courses for the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Army Special Operations Command (USASOC), and the University of Virginia, where he also designed and delivered a graduate-level AI security course and collaborates with the National Security Data and Policy Institute. Dr. Moore is a Senior Member of IEEE and a member of INFORMS and AFCEA.

Emma Meno is a Research Associate with the Intelligent Systems Division at Virginia Tech National Security Institute. Emma’s technical expertise centers at the intersection of cybersecurity and machine learning. At VTNSI, she is the primary technical contributor for various cybersecurity projects and topics, including cryptographic authentication with physical unclonable functions (PUFs), reinforcement learning in attack domains, penetration testing for virtual twin security, and distributed ledger technology (DLT) in satellite applications. Emma previously worked at Kudu Dynamics LLC as a full-time security researcher on a “Voice of the Offense” purple team cybersecurity contract. As part of that role, she evaluated and researched the frequency and nature of performers’ PDF parser differentials (i.e. encoding anomaly variations). During the last months of her Kudu position, Emma developed a tool to perform isolated smashes on raw PDF files to trigger such parser differentials. Emma’s graduate thesis work focused on neural cryptanalysis, aiming to study cipher strength via a novel black-box machine learning approach. Her work utilized supervised learning to train neural networks to predict encrypted bits given a set of plaintext/ciphertext pairs. The harder it was to mimic the encryption (i.e. the lower the bitwise prediction accuracy), the more secure the cipher.

Emma graduated with her M.S. in Computer Science and Applications at Virginia Tech in May 2021. She was selected as one of five finalists to compete for a 2022 Paul E. Torgersen Graduate Student Research Award in the M.S. Poster Presentation category for her thesis work. Previously, she earned her B.S. in Computer Science, Minor in Mathematics, and Honors Laureate Diploma at Virginia Tech in May 2020 after three years of collegiate study as part of the Accelerated Master’s Degree Program. She earned the sole Outstanding Senior Award for the Department of Computer Science.

John Elder V is a Data Scientist and educator for Elder Research, a respected analytics consulting firm.

John earned an MS from the Institute for Advanced Analytics at North Carolina State University and has delivered data science solutions for public and private clients since 2018. He enjoys translating real-world challenges into well-defined problems, solving those problems, and ensuring the solutions are understood and embraced by clients. John is proud that Elder Research brings solutions to clients which are implemented for positive ROI at a high rate.

John earned a BA in music technology from Virginia Tech and loves to play and write music in his spare time. You may also find him working on his car, attempting to complete a CrossFit workout, playing with his two young children, or enjoying one of his wife’s incredible ballet performances.