It is a "one of a kind" event, said Prakash Ranganathan, an associate professor and the director for cybersecurity research at the University of North Dakota College of Engineering and Mines. Alongside the College of Engineering and Mines and the Center for Cyber Security Research, it is also being jointly held by IEEE, a technical professional organization.
"UND is the only institution that has an IEEE annual event for cybersecurity," he said.
The Cyber Awareness and Research Symposium, taking place Monday, Oct. 27 to Thursday, Oct. 30, at the UND Memorial Union will feature authors of peer-reviewed papers, a cybersecurity competition for university and high school teams, workshops, a career fair and talks by guest speakers.
The choice to hold the symposium in October is because it's Cybersecurity Month, Ranganathan said. It is a student-oriented event not only to promote cybersecurity practices, but also to recruit students to programs such as cybersecurity, cybersecurity engineering and artificial intelligence.
"I'm doing this to help promote UND at the national level and to make sure that we are doing whatever we can to have the community aware of whatever they need to know about cybersecurity," he said.
AI has been a rising topic at UND. At the State of the University address, President Andrew Armacost said one of the goals for this year is for UND to become the AI university for North Dakota and thus become a national example of how AI can be adopted. He said it will involve public-private partnerships, working with people across campus and preparing students to go into the world as AI progresses.
Though the symposium is focused on the connection between AI and cybersecurity, Armacost said there is an "extraordinary interest in the humanities and the liberal arts about understanding AI."
"How does it transform the expectations of what students in those disciplines should be able to do? How does it impact their career prospects by having that understanding? And, most importantly, how do you take — this is probably the key point — how do you pick the mindset of a humanist or a philosopher or somebody in the liberal arts and actually influence the direction of AI based on that understanding of humanity," Armacost said. "I do think that universities like ours will be a guiding force in the long term direction of this new AI industry."
The research environment for cybersecurity is growing, Raganathan said, and UND has received a grant for cybersecurity efforts to protect substations in partnership with Minnkota Power. He expressed his gratitude for all of the sponsors that make the event possible, including those within the community and other departments at UND.
"Without the support of UND's community, we can't do this," he said.
© 2025 the Grand Forks Herald (Grand Forks, N.D.). Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
