The Spring 2024 Grace Series ended its run with Dr. Bhavani Thuraisingham, UT Dallas Founders Chair Professor of Computer Science and the Founding Executive Director of the Cyber Security Research and Education Institute (CSI) at UT Dallas.

Coincidentally, Dr. Thuraisingham was also the first speaker for the Grace Series when it began in the fall of 2015. The Grace Series honors the contributions of real-life women and men in science with the goal of inspiring and encouraging more of them to pursue STEM careers.

Recently, Dr. Thuraisingham was featured in the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) book “Rendering History: The Women of ACM-W.” In her career, she has delivered over 200 keynote/featured addresses and over 100 panel presentations, including at the United Nations, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Professors Without Borders.

Dr. Thuraisingham has also written 16 books, published more than 130 journal articles and over 300 conference papers, and has seven US patents.

Dr. Thuraisingham’s lecture was divided into two parts. The first part focused on her current technical research, which was on integrating Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques with Cyber Security.  This area has come to be known as “Trustworthy AI.” She also discussed attacks on machine learning techniques, such as poisoning the training data and thwarting the models. She argued that if the machine learning techniques are attacked, then one cannot trust the results.

She also discussed other aspects, such as fairness and the integrity of the machine learning algorithms. She and her team are now working to apply novel techniques that they have developed to transportation systems. UT Dallas is now part of the $20 million USDOT National University Technology Center led by Clemson University called TraCR (Transportation Cyber Security and Resiliency). The center’s goal is to develop novel AI techniques that are secure, private, fair and accurate.

The second part of her presentation was a motivational address titled “Playing the Long Game for Career Success.” During this part, she provided some examples and stories from her personal and professional life and career that she had experienced throughout her journey in both life and tech.

“I have many more examples and have written articles on this topic,” she said. “The important thing is to think of the big picture and the long term. Many of us are living longer than we would have expected so it’s not uncommon to have 50-60 years of a productive career. Therefore, one cannot and should not be obsessed with getting that promotion, fellowship, or award immediately.”

She continued: “While I received both the IEEE Fellow and AAAS Fellow in 2003, I waited patiently and got the ACM Fellow, which is highly coveted by computer scientists, fifteen years later in 2018.” 

In the end, her hard work and playing the long game paid off as the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) published a book in April 2024 that included her as one of the 30+ “Women who Changed the Face of Worldwide Computing Forever.” She said she cannot ask for more in her career, and attributed her success to playing the long game together with other aspects, such as having a strong support system and working hard.

She ended her talk by saying, “My approach to life and career keeps me motivated almost every single day. I couldn’t ask for more in my life and career.”