Click Here for List Research Papers Published | Click Here for List of Books Published
The rapid expansion and integration of digital devices across society, government, and military operations have heightened concerns about cyber threats, malicious activities, and unauthorized access to sensitive information. As cyberattacks and espionage escalate, the demand for digital forensics (DF) expertise, tools, and techniques has become more critical than ever. This need will continue to grow exponentially with the rise of autonomous vehicles, mobile devices, drones, and the Internet of Things, alongside increasing cybercrime and espionage threats. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the demand for digital forensics examiners equipped with advanced tools is projected to grow by 32% by 2028. Additionally, with digital device proliferation exceeding 26%, the number of active devices is expected to surpass 43 billion by 2023. To address this pressing need, Florida International University, in collaboration with global academic institutions and industry partners, has established the Forensics Investigations Network in Digital Sciences (FINDS) Research Center of Excellence (COE), funded by the U.S. Army Research Office. This center serves as a hub for research, technology transfer, and mentoring, bringing together DoD agencies, industry leaders, and national laboratories. The FINDS Research Center will enhance digital forensics capabilities, providing cutting-edge solutions to support the U.S. and the Army in combating emerging cyber threats.
This center, in collaboration with various global universities, industries, researchers and students, National Forensic Science Technology Center (NFSTC), and DoD Labs via multidisciplinary, collaborative research projects in five Digital Forensics theme areas—Analytical Methods/Evidence Processing Techniques; Forensic Fusion Models for Extracting Event Signatures; Analytical Method Processing and Big Data Digital Forensics; Drone Forensics and Ubiquitous Forensic Signatures; and Workforce Development, which will advance DoD digital forensic investigative capabilities and further improve decision-making capabilities. Our research significantly advances AI Powered applied forensic sciences by development of models and tools to understand and extract high-value, actionable information from digital data/devices across operational theaters. The Center is providing core capabilities in AI Enabled digital forensics, as a centralized development hub for advanced digital forensics tools, techniques, software, and hardware. This project has hosted several digital forensic workshops bringing government, industry, and academia together to showcase research results, facilitate information exchanges, and address emerging challenges.
The CoE’s primary focus is to provide educational infrastructure in Digital Forensics, identifying novel directions and tools developed by students/faculty to advance their careers in STEM areas. The Center will also serve as a foundation for developing research collaborations and capacity in participating institutions in partnership with federal institutions and laboratories (supporting letters attached) to create a pipeline for students to join the federal workforce. Our plan incorporates an investigative, synergetic, explicative and goal-driven spectrum of mentors committed to ensure a student research experience. Our mentors are rich in government research/industry experience and national security applications. Students will encounter a wide variety of DoD work interlaced across cybersecurity, digital forensics, data science, and AI/ML areas. Collaboration between CARFS (traditional forensics), NFSTC and the FINDS Center will advance state-of-art practices through multi-disciplinary research. Co-PIs Dr. Almirall, CARFS Director, and Mr. Lothridge, Executive Director NFSTC, will take active roles in research collaborations, discovery and student mentoring. Over 100 minority students and faculty will be trained through these projects. We have over $600K cost sharing among the participating universities (FIU – lead, JSU, GSU, FAMU), demonstrating our commitment to this Center of Excellence and its sustainability.
FINDS Research Center of Excellence fosters research collaboration between universities, business, industry, and government laboratories and agencies. The goal is to expand interdisciplinary research at each of the universities and support students. More importantly, collaborations on this project will add significantly to building AI powered Digital Forensic research capacities at the universities, motivating students to pursue careers in Digital forensics and AI in government positions. For each of the proposed research tasks, we will enhance the research capacity at JSU, FAMU and GSU as well as help students to develop the required innovations needed in algorithms, and analyze their time and space complexities, implement and test them with real-world crime network datasets. ORNL and AFRL will be enhancing students’ education through mentoring and visits to their labs through internships and workshops in the implementation of high-performance algorithms for these areas. The internships for these minority students will include designing algorithms, implementing them on high-performance computers and the results will be published in peer-reviewed conferences or journals.
Research innovations are disseminated to the broader community through research publications and participation of students and faculty in Digital Forensic and AI related conferences. Research Collaborators will also develop comprehensive, advanced tools and techniques that can be used by any DoD agency, university or industry. By involving graduate students/faculty in the context of research capacity will lead to develop a strong research culture within the community and also increase student access and success in degree programs in the STEM/Data Science fields. Project findings will be integrated with undergraduate/graduate security related courses the investigators teach at their respective institutions.
We follow a participatory action research approach in cooperation with students, faculty, industries, and federal agencies. We utilize both quantitative and qualitative research approaches in order to train these students who will be prepared to work at Federal agencies and labs. Researchers from NIST and AFRL will participate in these collaborations and provide a platform for internships for advanced training in the area of Digital forensics with the researchers training the participants in the development of optimal algorithms, design and implement prototypes and models at GSU/JSU/FAMU in collaboration with other researchers at FIU and ORNL and other laboratories. Minority students will be involved at every step of collecting data, designing, and implementing the projects. Results will be published in reviewed venues.