This past February, CCLP Director of Washington Programs Adam Clayton Powell III presented the Center’s Internet of Things (IoT) emergency response initiative at the 2017 National Governors Association (NGA) winter session in Washington, D.C. The presentation, which focused on cyber-security threats, discussed the multidisciplinary IoT program that CCLP announced last year in Washington, D.C. and on the USC campus in Los Angeles. To learn more about how the project was started, check out our blog post here from after the first university-wide meeting on IoT last September.
IoT is defined as the “the network of physical objects or ‘things’ embedded with electronics, software, sensors, and network connectivity, which enables these objects to collect and exchange data.” In its 2015 report, the UN estimated there will be 25 billion “networked devices” by 2020. IoT was identified by USC President C.L. Max Nikias as one of the major opportunities in the engineering and political sphere for USC in the years ahead.
Adam Powell’s presentation in February marked the beginning of a new partnership with the NGA on the information security t
hreat posed by the Internet of Things. As part of the partnership, Adam hosted a series of meetings in Washington, D.C. on March 28 and 29 with representatives from the technology industry, national and state government, the philanthropy world, and academia. The participants in the meeting discussed the urgent demands for IoT emergency response and the need to create a community of interest of IoT stakeholders. The roundtable participants included:
- Vint Cert, Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist at Google
- Jeffrey Smulyan, Chairman of the Board, Emmis Communications
- Scott Pattison, Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer of the National Governors Association
- William Check, Senior Vice President of Science and Technology, National Cable and Telecommunications Association
- Rajesh Bharwani, Deputy Staff Director of the US House of Representatives Science, Space and Technology Committee
- Lee Rainie, Director, Internet, Science and Technology, at the Pew Research Center
- Evelyn Remaley, Deputy Associate Administrator, U.S. National Telecommunications and Information Administration
- Michael Singer, Assistant Vice President, Technology Security, for AT&T
- Dan Dubno, Science and Technology Advisory Committee, U.S. Department of Homeland Security
- Bhaskar Krishnamachari, Director of the Center for Cyber-Physical Systems and the Internet of Things at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering and,
- Jerry Powers, Director of the Center for Technology Management at the USC Marshall School of Business.
Look out for more updates from the IoT project to be announced soon.