Faculty and Staff

Mohamed Eltoweissy is Department Head and Professor of Computer and Information Sciences at Virginia Military Institute. He is also a Professor affiliated with The Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Virginia Tech.

Eltoweissy served as Chief Scientist for Secure Cyber Systems at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. He also served on the faculty of James Madison University.

Eltoweissy co-founded several start-up companies including Video Semantics and Teradata Science.

Eltoweissy's current interests crosscut the areas of network security and resilience, cooperative autonomic systems, and networking architecture and protocols.

Eltoweissy has over 175 publications in archival journals and respected books and conference proceedings and an extensive funding record. He also served on the editorial board of IEEE Transactions on Computers (the flagship and oldest Transactions of the IEEE Computer Society) as well as other reputable journals.

In addition, Eltoweissy is active as an invited speaker at both the national and international levels. Eltoweissy received several awards and recognition for research, education, service, and entrepreneurship, including best paper awards, top placements at Cyber Security competitions, and a nomination for the Virginia SCHEV Outstanding Faculty Awards, the highest honor for faculty in Virginia. Eltoweissy is a senior member of IEEE and ACM.

Professor
Department Head
Computer and Information Sciences

Emeritus Professor
Computer and Information Sciences

Sook Ha is an Assistant Professor in Computer and Information Sciences at Virginia Military Institute. She received her Ph.D. in Computer Engineering in 2012 from The Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Virginia Tech. In her post-doctoral research in the Biocomplexity Institute of Virginia Tech, she developed an innovative scientific web modeling tool PlantSimLab (for an NSF grant project) that serving the research communities in plant biology. She also has 8 years of various industry experiences in software engineering.

Her research interest includes AI for bio-information, big data analytics, machine learning, deep learning, and data science. She is actively looking for research collaborators and motivated students/individuals. Please contact her at any time if you are interested.

Assistant Professor
Computer and Information Sciences

Major Youna Jung is an Assistant Professor of Computer and Information Sciences at Virginia Military Institute. She received her Ph.D. degree from Ajou University in South Korea in 2007 and then worked at the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Florida as a research faculty. Her research interests include multiagent systems, context/situation-aware computing, collaborative computing, disaster computing, health informatics, access control, privacy, cybersecurity, and so on.

Assistant Professor
Computer and Information Sciences

Adjunct Professor
Computer and Information Sciences

Assistant Professor
Computer and Information Sciences

Lt. Col. Tom Panko is Head of Technical Services in Preston Library and an Adjunct Professor of Computer and Information Sciences at the Virginia Military Institute.  He earned a BSBA with an emphasis in Management Information Systems and an MBA from the University of Southern Mississippi.  Tom has over 20 years of experience in the information services and technology industries.  He has worked in the public and private sectors over the course of his career and his professional responsibilities included work as a technician, installer, operator and administrator of multiple IBM minicomputer systems as well as various microcomputer-based systems.  Lt. Col. Panko has also served as a network administrator on multiple networks and worked as a programmer and systems analyst for many years. 

On a personal level, Tom was a proud artilleryman in the USAR and Virginia National Guard.

Adjunct Professor
Computer and Information Sciences

Jeffrey G. Smith, Jr. is currently Professor of Cyberspace Studies at VMI, where he served four years as the Dean of the Faculty and Deputy Superintendent for Academics.  Smith’s course, the “History of Information Technology (Past, Present, and Future),” examines the origins, evolution, and ethical implications of today’s technological environment.  Smith holds a Masters of Science degree in National Security from the National War College and a Doctoral degree in English Literature from Princeton University.  Smith is a founding member of the Advisory Group for the Army Cyber Institute. 

Smith’s 33-year career included multiple command and staff roles in Europe, Bosnia/Herzegovina, Iraq, and Afghanistan, as well as a three-year assignment on West Point’s English faculty. 

Smith served as the Chief Information Officer (CIO) for all coalition forces in Iraq (2003-2004).  Based on his experiences, Smith wrote “V Corps Battle Command Concept,” a white paper that led to the Army-wide transformation of its tactical communications architecture.  Later, Smith was named the Army’s senior signal officer to Afghanistan to set the network conditions for the Presidential surge (2009/10).  Upon his return, Smith established Europe’s first Army regional cyber center, which combined intelligence, signal, and information operations expertise to account for the expanding cyber threat.

Smith is the author of “A Unified Field Theory for Full Spectrum Operations: Cyberpower and the Cognitive Domain" (National Defense University 2009) and concluded his military career as the Deputy Commanding General of the Army’s Cyber Command. There, he served as the Army’s lead for the “LandCyber” white paper, the Army’s concept for cyber-related transformation. 

Maj. Doug Wainwright is the CIS Department IT Manager and Instructor. He earned an MDE in Distance Education at University of Maryland University College (UMUC). He came to VMI after 24 years in IT and Cybersecurity providing network engineering services and information security compliance support for DoD, DoJ, and DHS. From 1996 to 2013 Doug worked in support of the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) as a System Administrator, and Network Engineer integrating and troubleshooting DoD network encryption equipment in Secret Internet Protocol Router Network (SIPRNET) enclaves. 

As a Communications Security (COMSEC) Custodian, he developed training courses and provided instruction in the integration and operation of DoD network encryption equipment to active duty military personnel and government contractors. 

Served as VMI Information Security Officer (ISO) from 2014 to 2016. Responsible for the VMI information security operations, maintenance, and compliance with State of Virginia standards. 

Major Wainwright is an Adjunct Instructor for the UMUC Cybersecurity undergraduate program teaching online classes.

Major Wainwright currently maintains the following professional certifications: Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) and CompTIA Security+

IT Manager
Computer and Information Sciences

Hongbo Zhang is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Information Sciences at Virginia Military Institute. He received his Ph.D. from Virginia Tech. He was a Post-Doc research at Virginia Tech. He has been working in several different research areas including Human and Computer Interactions, Biomechanics, Manufacturing, Optics, 3D Imaging, Digital Holography, Optical Scanning Holography, Imaging Processing, and Computer Vision. 

He also has been working on software development for over 15 years using different computer languages in China, Singapore, and the USA.  He has developed numerous professional software including Tianhe CAD, Tianhe CAPP, E-portfolios, Open source education software (code named Sakai), Sports Management, Schedule Management and Optimization etc. He has been working on developing Scientific Computation software for image processing, signal processing, statistical analysis, machine learning, and computer vision.

He is passionate about applying research into real world applications to drive the technical advancement of our society to benefit all humankind.

He is also constantly looking for researcher collaborators and motivated students/individuals. He believes in the true power of working as a team instead of as a single individual. If you are interested in such opportunities, feel free to contact him at any time.

https://vt.academia.edu/HongboZhang 

Assistant Professor
Computer and Information Sciences