Chapter Hosts Second Dinner With a Scientist Event

In February, Pedro Ramirez, executive technical adviser, Nuclear Command, Control and Communications (NC3) Enterprise Center, Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska, was the guest speaker for the second Dinner with a Scientist event held at Omaha North High School. Ramirez covered his humble beginnings-how he first became interested in STEM as a child while investigating a computer he used for school. From there he talked about joining the Marine Corps, his interest in radios and computers, and finally coming to HMX-1 (Marine Helicopter Squadron One), the president's helicopter squadron. It was at HMX-1 where he became acquainted with the importance of security and just how serious the threats were to the mission; he began looking into how to protect the computer systems from these threats. At that time, Ramirez started his formal university education in computer science, specializing in what became known as cybersecurity. He began looking into not just how to mitigate threats but also how to find out more specifics about the bad actors-what they're interested in, how they're looking at you or getting information from within your network.Ramirez talked about and showed some screen shots of specific types of analytics he developed, which map connections and routing 'peers' across the broader networks. He described how you can analyze data about those connections to tell whether and how a computer or network is threatened.

Event Photographs: