UTSA's National Security Collaboration Center, which focuses on the intersection of technology and national security, is getting its next executive director from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. David Brown, who has decades of experience leading research and development in national defense strategies, is set to start in late January.
"San Antonio's rich history and unbounded future, paired with the drive and support of UTSA's entrepreneurial spirit and Tier One culture, provide an exceptional foundation for the NSCC's success," he said in a statement. "I'm eager to join the NSCC to establish new partnerships that build upon the university's cyber prominence, tackling the leading national security challenges of our time."
UTSA announced the appointment a few days after the center received a two-year $300,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to establish the National DigiFoundry, a consortium that could enhance management of digital assets such as cryptocurrencies.
Brown is stepping in after the center's founder and longtime Executive Director Guy Walsh left in June. Walsh, a retired Air Force brigadier general who led the hub since its launch in 2019, is now executive vice president and chief operating officer of the National Defense Industrial Association, a Washington, D.C., advocacy group for military contractors.
"Dave's extensive experience, paired with his vision for the future of the NSCC, aligns exceptionally well with our strategic destination to become a great public research university," UTSA President Taylor Eighmy said in a statement.
At Lawrence Livermore, Brown was an employee of Battelle Memorial Institute, where he served in senior defense program leadership, government affairs and laboratory strategy roles.
WHAT IT DOES
The center brings together government, university and industry experts to tackle all sorts of high-tech threats with research in forensics; visualization; cybersecurity; data analytics; cryptography; attack and threat modeling and mitigation; machine learning and artificial intelligence; and software, hardware and platform integrity, UTSA said.
It's located downtown in a new $90 million building along with the university's School of Data Science and Cybersecurity Manufacturing Innovation Institute.
John Huggins, who has served as the center's interim executive director since June, said the National Science Foundation grant is important because digital assets have surpassed a trillion dollars in market value. Digital currencies are of concern because they are volatile, difficult to regulate and susceptible to cyber threats.
The National DigiFoundry project looks to explore global standards and best practices for the use and exchange of digital assets. The goal is to build a framework that can adapt to the quick-moving market.
The project has interest from "multiple federal agencies, health care providers, military services, Web 3.0 companies, public transportation operators, investors and various entrepreneurial startups," Huggins said in a statement. He added that it "will allow UTSA to partner in unique ways with universities, industry, government, nonprofits and national labs to innovate in the digital asset ecosystem."
The school is collaborating with Forward Edge-AI Inc., a San Antonio artificial intelligence and cybersecurity firm. The company is part of the National Security Collaboration Center and the first member of the National DigiFoundry project.
"The (project) represents an exciting new model for quickly transitioning new digital asset technologies into practical, valuable and innovative use cases," said Forward Edge-AI CEO Eric Adolphe in a statement.
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