The Ted and Karyn Hume Center for National Security and Technology is a unique organization at Virginia Tech focused on developing future leaders for the US Federal Government, and is part of the College of Engineering. Supported by an endowment from Ted and Karyn Hume, the center provides scholarships and fellowships to students interested in careers in the Intelligence Community, and promotes national security research within the university.
With an emphasis on the intelligence and defense sectors, the Hume Center promotes educational and research programs geared toward this mission. Our goal is to be the country’s leader in holistically developing the elite science and technology human capital for the Intelligence Community through sustainable and flexible research programs that engage faculty and students to solve the needs of the national security community. The Hume Center is the umbrella organization for classified research at Virginia Tech.
In cooperation with the Virginia Tech – Howard University Intelligence Community Center for Academic Excellence (IC-CAE) program, student development includes campus events focused on national security topics, academic scholarships and fellowships, study abroad programs, and promotion of summer internship opportunities. Through our campus facilities supporting classified research, students can obtain security clearances and gain experience working in secure environments.
The Hume Center’s current research focus is in the following areas: Cyber Security, particularly for critical infrastructure; Wireless Communications, with an emphasis on software-defined and cognitive radio; and Software Engineering, leveraging the latest research to develop turnkey solutions.
The Virginia Tech Research Center @ Arlington opened in June 2011. Cybersecurity is a major research theme for this new facility with research thrusts on wireless security, network defense and cloud security.
Dr. Charles Clancy is an Associate Professor in the Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, and is Director of the Ted and Karyn Hume Center for National Security and Technology. In his role, Dr. Clancy is responsible for leading Virginia Tech’s collaboration with national security organizations within the United States Federal Government and industry. Additionally, he is involved in developing and expanding the university’s role in cyber-security research. His current area of research interest is in radio frequency spectrum security.
Prior to joining Virginia Tech, Dr. Clancy was a telecommunications advisor to the United States military, US Embassy, Baghdad. In this role he provided technical and policy advice for the Iraqi telecommunications infrastructure reconstruction efforts, and led US efforts in successfully establishing Baghdad’s first commercial international fiber-optic Internet connectivity.
Prior to his time in Iraq, Dr. Clancy spent five years as a Senior Research Scientist and Program Manager with the Laboratory for Telecommunications Sciences, a federal research laboratory at the University of Maryland, where he was also an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. There he led government research programs in wireless communications, with an emphasis on software-defined and cognitive radio. His research focused on efficient use of commodity processors for software-defined radio, and security implications involved in military use of cognitive radio technologies. During this time, Dr. Clancy was also heavily involved in wireless authentication and authorization protocol standardization, and held leadership positions within the Internet Engineering Task Force.
Dr. Clancy received his B.S. in Computer Engineering from the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in 2001, his M.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 2002, and his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Maryland, College Park, in 2006. His studies focused on information-theoretic foundations of communications and security.
Dr. Clancy is the co-founder of Stochastic Research, a firm specializing in technical and business consulting in the telecommunication field. Additionally, he is an adjunct scientist with the Institute for Defense Analyses.
