Our unique bio-informatics software has finally been accepted into the Journal of the Association of Laboratory Automation. This is great news since LINA (http://linasoft.weebly.com) has been used and continues to be used in many laboratories in the United States and Canada. It is nice to see your work get published, and the product of your work being used practically and not just theoretically.

Many thanks to all the other authors: Ahmed Yousef, Gregory Bartlett, Joe Mymryk and Michael Kane.

I have finally accomplished my academic goal. I successfully defended my dissertation and it went fairly well. I will probably have to make some minor revisions in my actual paper but other than that, I was really happy with how things went.

I can't believe that I have been in university for 10 years, but it is paying off and will pay off forever. I have learned quite a bit from being at Purdue and I will surely miss it since I have accepted a position with Zayed University in the United Arab Emirates. Yes, I will be an Assistant Professor there and I am quite excited about the opportunity.

If there is anything I have learned from this experience: Anything is possible. Perseverance is the key instrument that one should use in their lives in order to accomplish their dreams. I wanted to get my PhD before I turned 28 and I was able to accomplish that! (I’m 27 now). Better yet, I am really happy to be the first PhD graduate from the Cyber Forensics program at Purdue - a world renowned program and institution. Yes ladies and gentlemen, believe it or not, the first PhD graduate from the Cyber Forensics program at Purdue is Arabic! I am quite proud of that accomplishment to be honest, and I hope that I will accomplish more in the near future.

My goal for the next few years is to pass on some of the knowledge I have learned to my future students. I will also be working closely with Law Enforcement agencies in order to play an integral part in the practical world of cyber crime as well. I need to build my practical knowledge in the area of digital forensics as well as my academic knowledge. Research is one of my top priorities, so keep a look out on my publication page and you will find some interesting papers coming out.

I want to thank everyone that has encouraged me to persevere and pursue my dream especially my advising committee, family, friends and my beautiful wife. Thank you all for being so patient with me and not giving up on me staying in school forever.

The funny thing is that I will be going back to school, but this time, to truly educate (and learn! – learning never stops). I also foresee myself taking many courses during my career at different institutions, because my thirst of knowledge has not been quenched yet! Frankly, I don't know if it ever will be.

On a final note, if any parents are reading this, I urge you to stop thinking that your children should go to university in order to get a good job after they graduate. Students should pursue education in order to better themselves and the future of this world. They should go to university to find themselves, and to seek knowledge. Over the past 10 years I have seen a drastic change in the mindset of educational specialists and parents, putting their pure emphasis on graduates finding jobs. Universities were not created for employment; they were created for people to find their true selves, to meet others from different environments and backgrounds, learn from them, and to seek knowledge.

I leave you with a quote by Dr. Baggili: Knowledge is my key to the happiness treasure chest.

So I just got back from the conference and I had a great time. I met a lot of important people from the field and learned a lot as well. I especially got good contacts with the people from the forensic companies so that I can potentially start using their software in the forensics program I intend to develop abroad.
What have I learned from this conference?
1 - There isn't one cell phone forensics tool that does it all
2 - There is a lack of certification and training
3 - It is still a difficult/debatable process to get an individual's cellular phone for evidence
4 - Cellphone data/information is mostly used as information to support a case
5 - Data mining for information is the next big thing (That was what our presentation is about)
6 - Everyone is still so focused on acquisition of data from mobile devices, not much has been done on the analysis of that data
7 - The market is corporate driven at this point, and slowly governmental entities are getting involved more and more to try to solve some of the issues that are rising relating to law etc.

I have probably learned many other things as well, but overall, I feel that I learned a lot and I've made some good contacts.

If you would like to simply ask any questions/etc? go ahead and send me a message;
 

So we just signed a university application for a provisional patent for the work we have been doing, which is exciting news. I would have to thank both Dr. Rogers and Ashwin Mohan for this opportunity. In the mean time, I have given most of my focus towards my dissertation because I need to graduate. It is quite hectic trying to get married (March 7th), Finish up my dissertation (This summer), teach programming, work on two other projects, and try to find a job all at the same time. It is times like this in which I stress out a little, but if anything, I guess it is making me stronger. Getting out of school and getting married are two major steps in one's life, and I have to face them at the same time.

This year, I have been invited to talk at the Mobile Forensics World 2009 conference. To see the website for the conference you can go to: http://www.mobileforensicsworld.com/. It is the one and only mobile forensics conference that bridges LE, academia and the private sector. It is probably the most comprehensive conference for the mobile forensics field and I really admire Rick Mislan for putting forth the continuous effort to make it happen. I will be giving a talk there with my colleague Ashwin Mohan - and I will not reveal the topic until it gets accepted for publication! I would highly suggest attending the conference if you want to learn more about what is going on in the mobile forensics field. Exciting news for me.. at least in this really bad snowy weather.

This is a new semester and I have three major ideas in my head that I will accomplish. 1) Getting a paper ready for the SADFE conference 2) Getting another paper ready to get published either in the SSDD journal or for the Digital Forensics Workshop. One more idea came to me that involves exif data for JPEG files that I'll be working on with a colleague of mine that shall get published somewhere as well. Finally - there is my dissertation. I'm glad I have the IRB approval now so that I can start my testing. I'm really looking forward for a productive academic semester and for this New Year in academia - I WILL accomplish all of the aforementioned projects.

On a side note - I found an interesting website (http://www.dfinews.com/ ) that also published an article I co-authored with a colleague of mine. The article was originally published in Forensic Magazine. It is nice to see something that you worked on go to multiple places, so that more people can read it. That is what I really love about publishing. I like the idea that people in this world like to hear what I have to say, it makes me feel that what I have to say is important, and furthermore it helps me self-actualize and shows me that I am making a difference in this world, even if it’s a small one.

What is life without making a difference? .. I don't know, but I believe everyone has a purpose, and I feel like mine is integrated with both music and academia, so I will strive to make as big as an impact as I can in both domains.

So I gave the CERIAS talk which you can view using this link:

CERIAS TALK:Extending anonymity research to high-tech white collar crimes and IT insider threat: A critical step

I am still baffled by the idea that security professionals and students in the field do not really see that humans are a major problem, if not the major problem in the computer security/forensics world. Furthermore what baffles me more is that students in the top universities - especially at the graduate level - in more naturalistic sciences do not really understand the philosophy and history of the scientific method. I feel like it should be imperative that every graduate curriculum should teach the philosophy of science in its curriculum as well as advanced courses in experimental design and statistical methods for data analysis. I have just come to accept that most of my peers in the computing world will not accept psychology and other social sciences as solid foundations for research. In my opinion, since I am seeing both worlds (social and natural sciences), social scientists seem to grasp the concept of experimentation and the scientific method better than natural scientists, and perhaps this is due to the numerous attacks they face as a science. Social scientists strengthen their knowledge on the scientific method both philosophically and scientifically, so these attacks by natural scientists could be argued against and mitigated. I leave you with this thought (given to me by professor Major Prof) - Computer scientists seem to forget that their field is based on the Bayesian model - which is essentially statistics and probability....So as a computer scientists, or computer technologists, never forget that there is a margin of error in computing, just like any other science in this world…The next time you think that computers don't fail ask yourself the following question: Did my laptop/desktop ever stop working? Did my PC/MAC crash? Have I ever seen the blue screen of death?... What it boils down to is everything in this world is relative and nothing is absolutely 100% objective.

I'm very excited that some colleges and universities around the US are interested in adopting our book. Guity Ravai and I actually wrote the book "Step into programming with visual basic .NET", because we never found a good book for introductory programming classes. We never wrote the book with the intent to make money. Actually, I had two motivations for co-writing the book 1) I was sick of not finding a programming book that fit our needs 2) I felt that it would be a great experience to go through the process of writing a book at a young age because I foresee myself publishing a couple of books during my life. Most people that write programming books over explain things, or under-explain things for that matter. Also, most .NET books focus on teaching the language, not the actual programming concepts themselves. Right now, we have 2 adoptions that are finalized, and 2 other ones in process. Interestingly enough, even Borders ordered one book in New York! I hope that we get more adoptions because a) I'm a poor college student and b) If the book becomes successful, we will be able to revise it and produce a third edition c) The success will give me a thin entering wedge into getting another book published. If you are reading this and you are a programming educator - you can go to the following website http://www.kendallhunt.com/ravai and request a review copy for free!