By Assefaw Gebremedhin and James Crabb
The VICEROY CySER Summer Workshop 2026 ran from May 18 to May 22, with a check-in and mixer event being held May 17. A recap of the workshop’s events follows.
Day 1: May 18
Washington State University Voiland College Dean Partha Pande and School of EECS Associate Director Venera Arnaoudova welcomed workshop attendees and provided an overview of the college and its mission, highlighting the importance of cybersecurity in all our endeavors. CySER Program Coordinator James Crabb provided an overview of the workshop.
Chester “CJ” Maciag, VICEROY National Director and Director for Cyber-Spectrum Academic Engagement at the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, delivered a keynote address, setting the tone for the workshop and contextualizing the broader mission of the VICEROY program.
CySER PI Assefaw Gebremedhin discussed cybersecurity scholarship opportunities at WSU.
Sherri Lynn Conklin, Assistant Professor in the School of Politics, Philosophy, and Public Affairs at WSU led an interactive cyber ethics discussion centered around a recent cybersecurity breach of the Canvas platform that affected a number of institutions in the United States, including WSU.
The day concluded with a poster session showcasing research completed by VICEROY CySER students in the spring 2026 semester, mentored by graduate students and faculty advisors. This mentored research is part of the extensive training CySER students receive in addition to their coursework.
Day 2: May 19
The morning session featured a series of three talks. Feng-Hao Liu, Associate Professor in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at WSU, discussed post-quantum cryptography and his research in that area. Also from EECS, Assistant Professor Leon Li spoke on the importance of hardware security, associated vulnerabilities, and his work in addressing such vulnerabilities. Finally, Kristopher Micinski, Associate Professor in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Syracuse University, discussed formal methods in software engineering and their applications for software security.
The afternoon began with a hands-on activity exploring web security, led by Xu Lin, Assistant Professor in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at WSU. Students completed web-based challenges designed to teach them about web vulnerabilities such as SQL injection and cross-site scripting.
This was followed by a talk from Rob Crossler, Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in the Management, Information Systems, and Entrepreneurship department at WSU, on human behavior and organizational security with highlights on AI-enhanced threats.
Day 3: May 20
The day began with WSU EECS Associate Professor Parteek Kumar, who gave a talk on security applications for agentic AI, followed by a hands-on activity wherein students learned how to assemble AI agents for different tasks using publicly available tools.
WSU Associate Professor of Computer Science Thomas Gilray, an expert in programming languages, gave a presentation on software verification using contracts.
In the afternoon, students went on their first of two field trips. The destination of this field trip was the Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories Power Grid Components Facility in Pullman, Washington. Our host, Flor Larios-Ramos, University Recruiting Specialist at SEL, welcomed attendees and introduced a panel featuring five SEL professionals involved in cybersecurity. Panelists discussed their roles, career paths, teamwork, hiring perspectives, and strategies for career success. Attendees asked many thoughtful questions and received valuable insights.
After the panel, participants were divided into groups for a guided tour of SEL’s power grid component manufacturing facilities. Each guide provided clear explanations of processes across various departments.
Day 4: May 21
This morning featured the second field trip, this time to Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories’ Moscow, Idaho campus to tour SEL’s printed circuit board (PCB) manufacturing site. There, they observed the step-by-step, layer-by-layer process of PCB production, followed by a Q&A session with our tour guides.
The afternoon session began with a talk given by Jennifer Henrichsen, Assistant Professor in the Edward R. Murrow College of Communication at WSU, titled “Journalism on the Front Line: Cyber-Physical Precarity and Democratic Backsliding in the United States.”
After that, four professionals working in the cybersecurity industry joined remotely for this year’s industry panel. This included Nathan Kipp of SEL, Laurent Njilla from the Air Force Research Laboratory, Slater Weinstock at Amazon, and Kenneth Eversole from OpsCompanion. Panelists answered student-submitted questions, discussed their career paths, described a typical day in their roles, and offered practical advice on entering and thriving in the cybersecurity field, building professional networks, and growing both personally and professionally.
Day 5: May 22
Newly-minted Ph.D. James Halvorsen kicked the day off with a presentation on the applications and challenges of using artificial intelligence in cybersecurity. His talk was followed by a presentation related to vulnerabilities in the industrial internet-of-things (IIoT), specifically advanced manufacturing systems. This was presented by Satyajit Mojumder, Assistant Professor in the School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering at WSU. The third talk of the morning was given by Ann Marie Reinhold, Assistant Professor in the Cybersecurity and Software Engineering Laboratory at Montana State University. She spoke on her research aimed at improving how vulnerabilities are classified, catalogued, and referenced.
The afternoon began with a student panel featuring five VICEROY CySER students and alumni: Collin Bale (Cybersecurity, Class of ’28), Caitlyn Boyd (Computer Science, Class of ’26), Lauren Caruso (Management Information Systems, Class of ’26), Adam Caudle (Computer Science, Class of ’26), and Sean Hodgson (Cybersecurity, Class of ’26). These students, all of whom had participated in CySER for the past two to four years, shared their experiences with internships, capstone projects, cyber competitions, club activities, and more.
The workshop was closed off by Sola Adesope, Professor of Educational Psychology at WSU and Evaluator of the CySER program, who spoke on the topic of lifelong learning and professional development. Adesope also administered a post-workshop feedback survey.