Two college men talk during a poster session for a symposium. One man is using his hands to indicate what he is describing.

Collaboration drives 2025 Cyber-Physical Innovation Symposium

man with glasses standing in front of blue backgroundMilledge Austin5 min readSeptember 18, 2025

Augusta University holds a distinct position in Georgia and the region. As the flagship health sciences and medical research university for the University System of Georgia, it is also the only institution in Georgia to have earned the National Security Agency’s National Centers of Academic Excellence designations in both cyber defense and cyber operations.

AU features a collaborative, multidisciplinary research enterprise that partners with corporations, communities and government entities. This allows AU to drive groundbreaking discoveries and real-world solutions that tackle critical health, security, economic and societal concerns, ultimately enhancing the human experience.

On Friday, Sept. 5, AU’s School of Computer and Cyber Sciences showcased this collaboration by hosting the 2025 Cyber-Physical Systems Innovation Symposium at the Hull-McKnight Building of the Georgia Cyber Innovation and Training Center. The symposium was co-organized with the University of Georgia and co-chaired by Konstantin “Costas” Busch, PhD, department chair and professor in the Department of Computer Science at AU, and WenZhan Song, PhD, the Georgia Power Mickey A. Brown Professor in computer engineering and founding director of the Center for Cyber-Physical Systems at UGA. This marked the fourth year of the event, with AU taking the point as the lead institution of a National Science Foundation Innovation Engine grant that sponsors the annual symposium.

Two men stand side by side as they listen to a speaker during a lecture.
UGA’s WenZhan Song, PhD, left, and AU’s Konstantin “Costas” Busch, PhD, co-chaired the symposium. [Milledge Austin/Augusta University]

Over 100 cybersecurity professionals, faculty, staff and students registered for the event that featured a full day’s worth of presentations and conversations based around cybersecurity, cyber-physical systems, edge computing, Internet of Things and medical devices. In particular, this year’s symposium focused on the interaction of cybersecurity and artificial intelligence in cyber-physical systems and how AI can help improve cybersecurity aspects of cyber-physical systems while making the use of AI in such systems more secure.

“We are thrilled to host this annual symposium in Augusta,” said Alexander Schwarzmann, PhD, dean of the School of Computer and Cyber Sciences. “It brings together professionals and educators from several of our partners and neighbors in the region and is a fantastic forum for the exchange of ideas on the ever-changing state of technology, including AI and cybersecurity.”

A man stands at a podium with a microphone and raises his right arm while addressing a large group of people inside an auditorium.
Alexander Schwarzmann, PhD, dean of AU’s School of Computer and Cyber Sciences, delivered the opening remarks to begin the 2025 symposium. [Milledge Austin/Augusta University]

Included in the day’s numerous presentations were a pair of keynote addresses. The morning keynote was titled, “Putting Science to Work in Cyber-Physical Systems,” and was delivered by Tammy Taylor, deputy laboratory director of Savannah River National Laboratory. The afternoon keynote, “Innovation and Cybersecurity: Challenges and Opportunities in AI-Driven Manufacturing,” was delivered by Jaime Camelio, PhD, former program director for the National Science Foundation Innovation Corps program and professor of Mechanical Engineering at UGA.

A woman stands at a podium and speaks to a large group of people.
Tammy Taylor, deputy laboratory director of Savannah River National Laboratory, delivered the morning keynote. [Milledge Austin/Augusta University]
A man gives a presentation to a large group of people in a big auditorium.
Jaime Camelio, PhD, former program director for the NSF Innovation Corps program, delivered the afternoon keynote. [Milledge Austin/Augusta University]

“The symposium gave an excellent opportunity to strengthen the collaborative activities between the School of Computer and Cyber Sciences with regional industrial and government partners,” said Busch. “It also brought together representatives from different colleges and schools and inspired fruitful research discussions. We are grateful to the keynote speakers, presenters and all participants for making this a successful event.”

Augusta University was represented by eight presenters spanning the School of Computer and Cyber Sciences, Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University, Dental College of Georgia and the School of Public Health.

Presentations by AU representatives included:

  • Michael Nowatkowski, PhD, professor and director of AU’s Cyber Institute, School of Computer and Cyber Sciences – “Medical Device Security”
  • Sejong Bae, PhD, professor and chair of the Department of Biostatistics, Data Science, and Epidemiology, School of Public Health – “Leveraging AI and Machine Learning to Transform Clinical Trials: Enhancing Design, Analysis, and Outcomes Through Real-World Evidence”
  • Arni S.R. Srinivasa Rao, PhD, professor and director of the Laboratory for Theory and Mathematical Modeling, Medical College of Georgia – “The First AI Model for COVID-19 Identification, and How It Worked”
  • Kim Capehart, DDS, PhD, associate dean and professor, Dental College of Georgia – “Implications of AI in Dentistry”
  • Zi Wang, PhD, assistant professor, School of Computer and Cyber Sciences – “When Sensing Meets Intelligence: Building Ubiquitous Human-Centric Systems for Everyday Life”
  • Jason Orlosky, PhD, associate professor, and Alireza Taheritajar, PhD student, School of Computer and Cyber Sciences – “Scalable Object Detection in Mixed Reality using Incremental Re-training and One-shot 3D Annotation”
  • Justin Henry, PhD student, School of Computer and Cyber Sciences – “Encountering Complications Involving NIDS and ML Research for CPS”
A man holds a microphone while speaking to a large group of people gathered in an auditorium.
WenZhan Song, PhD, asks a question of members of one of the panels. [Milledge Austin/Augusta University]
A man holds a microphone while speaking to a large group of people gathered in an auditorium.
Steve Weldon, program director of the Cyber Program at the Savannah River National Laboratory, presents during the symposium. [Milledge Austin/Augusta University]
A man sitting in a crowded auditorium takes a picture of a screen with his cellphone.
A man stands at a podium with a microphone while speaking to a large group of people gathered in an auditorium.
Michael Nowatkowski, professor and director of AU’s Cyber Institute with AU’s School of Computer and Cyber Sciences. [Milledge Austin/Augusta University]
A man stands at a podium with a microphone while speaking to a large group of people gathered in an auditorium.
Sejong Bae, PhD, professor and chair of the Department of Biostatistics, Data Science, and Epidemiology for AU’s School of Public Health. [Milledge Austin/Augusta University]
A college woman stands up in a crowded auditorium and asks a question of a presenter.
A man stands at a podium with a microphone while speaking to a large group of people gathered in an auditorium.
Arni S.R. Srinivasa Rao, PhD, professor and director of the Laboratory for Theory and Mathematical Modeling at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University. [Milledge Austin/Augusta University]
A man stands at a podium with a microphone while speaking to a large group of people gathered in an auditorium.
Kim Capehart, DDS, PhD, associate dean and professor of the Dental College of Georgia. [Milledge Austin/Augusta University]
A man stands at a podium with a microphone while speaking to a large group of people gathered in an auditorium.
Zi Wang, PhD, assistant professor in the School of Computer and Cyber Sciences. [Milledge Austin/Augusta University]
A college man stands up in the audience of a large auditorium and asks a question of a speaker during a presentation.
A man stands at a podium with a microphone while speaking to a large group of people gathered in an auditorium.
Jason Orlosky, PhD, associate professor in AU’s School of Computer and Cyber Sciences. [Milledge Austin/Augusta University]
A man stands at a podium with a microphone while speaking to a large group of people gathered in an auditorium.
Alireza Taheritajar, PhD student in the School of Computer and Cyber Sciences. [Milledge Austin/Augusta University]
A man stands at a podium with a microphone while speaking to a large group of people gathered in an auditorium.
Justin Henry, PhD student in the School of Computer and Cyber Sciences. [Milledge Austin/Augusta University]

In between the six presentation sections, a poster session was held just outside the doors of the auditorium, where 10 AU PhD students and candidates shared about their research alongside faculty from UGA and others.

  • Pouria Rad – “Mapping the Research Landscape – An Exploratory Analysis of AI Applications in Digital Forensics”
  • Prajwal Basnet – “FlushSync: Hardware Resource Stalling from Asynchronous Services in LSM-tree based Stateful Streaming Processing”
  • Abdullah Melhem – “Secure and Resilient Clustered Federated Learning for Web-Enabled Healthcare Analytics Using Lightweight Blockchain and Adaptive Model Selection”
  • Rajon Bardhan – “Integration of NLP in Digital Forensics: A Pilot Study of Practitioner Perceptions on Chat Data Analysis Tools”
  • Ramesh Adhikari – “Efficient Transaction Processing in Blockchain Sharding”
  • Mahdieh Heidaripour – “Organizing Records for Retrieval in Multi-Dimensional Range Searchable Encryption”
  • Maksuda Rabeya – “WiFi Traffic Inspection for Obscured Devices”
  • Hanieh Rashidpour – “Cross-Reality Asymmetric Collaboration”
  • MD Mahady Hassan and Shawn Edwards – “AI-Driven Robust ECG Denoising and Cardiac Anomaly Detection Technique for Wearable Healthcare Devices”
A college woman speaks with another woman and talks about her scientific poster. She is pointing to one section of the poster.
Two college men stand on either side of a scientific poster.
A college woman stands next to her scientific poster for her project titled, "WiFi Traffic Inspection for Obscured Devices."
A college woman speaks with a man and talks about her scientific poster. She is pointing to one section of the poster.
A college man stands next to his scientific poster for his project titled, "Efficient Transaction Processing in Blockchain Sharding."

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Written by
Milledge Austin

Milledge Austin is the manager of external communications for Communications and Marketing at Augusta University. Contact him to schedule an interview on this topic or with one of our experts at miaustin@augusta.edu.

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