search.noResults

search.searching

dataCollection.invalidEmail
note.createNoteMessage

search.noResults

search.searching

orderForm.title

orderForm.productCode
orderForm.description
orderForm.quantity
orderForm.itemPrice
orderForm.price
orderForm.totalPrice
orderForm.deliveryDetails.billingAddress
orderForm.deliveryDetails.deliveryAddress
orderForm.noItems
but I don’t think we can afford to do that with many of these new systems. I think we need to make sure that security is part of the design process in these systems, and we need to find ways to certify some of these systems as being secure enough to deploy.


VB: The day you became the CCI’s execu- tive director, the United States had 30 COVID-19 cases; now we’re approaching 5.5 million [as of mid-August]. What kind of challenges has that presented to your initiative, which is predicated on getting 320 researchers, 87 companies and students, ranging from high schools to graduate schools, all working together? DaSilva: Within this initial phase … what I would have wanted to do is bring everyone together physically and actually get to know people, not just in seminars and so on, but also during the coffee breaks and do all the networking. That is the part that we haven’t been able to do. That’s a bit challenging. Like everyone else, we have been finding ways to work around it. I think we’re still in that phase where we


take the technology that was out there and then we make do with the needs that we are facing right now. … It’s a huge challenge to start a new initiative like this, but I think it’s also the right time to be thinking about innovation in this phase because we need more innovation more than ever. We’re already talking about things like


with these cyberphysical systems, which usually have some physical embodiment. If you hack into them, then you can cause a lot of damage. You can cause a drone to crash, you can cause a car to speed up and so on and so forth. … Yes, we want to advance the programmability of these systems, but also in a way that is secure, that cannot be easily hacked into and cause a serious accident.


VB: There’s a history of when we develop things on the internet, somebody breaks into them and then after the fact, we figure out some sort of security measure. But you can’t afford to do that with something like a car, right? DaSilva: Right. I think you’re totally right that security sometimes is an afterthought. You do something and then people hack into it and then you patch the problem, etc.,


www.VirginiaBusiness.com


contact tracing and how to do that in a way that respects people’s privacy. There needs to be a lot of new invention and innovation in that space, and that’s exactly the space of CCI. I think that’s the opportunity side of things. We have also been a bit fortu- nate that our research is, of course, the very use of technology, so people can do a lot of things remotely. Of course, there are jobs that really require physical presence, but for us, at least, in a short period of time, there’s a lot that we can do, given the current teleworking moments that we’re in.


VB: In a column for the Richmond Times-Dispatch, you wrote that COVID-19 may have accelerated the adoption of technology for teleworking and autonomous systems by a decade or more. How has that happened? DaSilva: I think we’re still in the making-do


VIRGINIA BUSINESS | 53


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72