Faculty and Staff

Mohamed Azab is an assistant professor in the computer and information sciences department. He is affiliated with The City of Scientific Research and Technological Applications, The SmartCI Research Center, VT-MENA, (Virginia Tech- Middle East and North Africa), and the College of Engineering Alexandria University, Alexandria, Egypt.

Mohamed received his doctorate in computer engineering in 2013 from The Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Virginia Tech.

He has multiple provisional patents, book chapters among various publications in archival journals and respected conference proceedings.

His research interests lie in the area of cybersecurity and trustworthy engineering ranging from theory to design to implementation. His recent research crosscuts the areas: Software Defined Networking (SDN) architectures and protocols, high performance and cloud computing, ubiquitous Internet of Things (IoT), and Cyber-Physical systems (CPS).

Mohamed is the founder of the Cyber Security and IoT lab hosting Mohamed’s Ph.D. and Masters students research activities.

Mohamed acted as a keynote speaker in multiple prestigious conferences. He served on multiple conference and workshop program and steering committees.

Mohamed’s publications: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=pOxASp0AAAAJ&hl=

Professor
Computer and Information Sciences
Electrical and Computer Engineering

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 the Department of Information Sciences at Virginia Military Institute. She received her Ph.D. from Virginia Tech in 2012 and did her post doctoral research in the Biocomplexity Institute of Virginia Tech. She developed PlantSimLab, a powerful scientific web modeling tool for plant biologists research community, for a project funded by National Science Foundation. She also worked as a software engineer for several years and developed various powerful software for airspace design and air-traffic controlling system for MITRE, a federally supported R & D in the nations capital area.

Her research interest includes bioinformatics, systems biology, computational biology, big data analysis, data science, statistical analysis, machine learning, and scientific web application tool development. She is actively looking for research collaborators and motivated students/individuals. Please contact her 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

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

Professor
Computer and Information Sciences

Major Doug Wainwright is the CIS Department IT Manager and Instructor. He earned a MDE in Distance Education at University of Maryland University College (UMUC) and is a member of the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association (AFCEA). He came to VMI after 24 years in IT 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 Cisco certification courses.

Major Wainwright currently maintains the following professional certifications:

• Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP)
• Cisco Certified Design Professional (CCDP)
• Cisco Certified Network Professional Security (CCNP Security)
• Cisco Certified Network Professional (CCNP) Routing and Switching
• NSA COMSEC Custodian

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