The USC Viterbi School of Engineering had an excellent showing at the third annual Department of Homeland Security university summit held March 17-19 in Washington, D.C.
Graduate student Jason Tsai received the best student poster award for his presentation of IRIS, a program for federal air marshals to randomize their security operations. The program is a follow-up to ARMOR, the system now in use at Los Angeles International Airport.
Milind Tambe, who worked with CREATE to build ARMOR, which recently received a commendation from the city of Los Angeles, worked with Tsai on the IRIS system, as did postdoctoral student Chris Kiekintveld and graduate student/programmer Shyamsunder Rathi.
According to the poster Tsai presented, his system uses a game-theoretic approach to analyze the risks and costs of the flight safety problem.
Tambe’s team used the visit to deliver semi-final software to the air marshals, who will test it.
Tsai came to USC from Harvard University, where he won his undergraduate degree in economics.