News & events
News & events
Milestones, annual meetings, publications, invited talks from industry and government, and outreach.
2026
Publication
Four papers at DASC and ITSC 2026
Results on GPS-robust separation assurance, spoofing-aware trajectory planning, vision-language safe-zone detection, and heterogeneous fleets appeared at the Digital Avionics Systems Conference and the IEEE ITSC.
Event
Year 2 annual review at Purdue
The team met at Purdue University to present Year 2 results, including student posters from NVCC interns, and to plan Year 3 demonstrations.
Outreach
Second NVCC intern cohort builds the GridEye UTM monitor
Four NVCC interns studied MAVLink control-link security and built GridEye, a UTM monitoring dashboard, then presented posters at the Year 2 review.
Read more: Second NVCC intern cohort builds the GridEye UTM monitor
Publication
Language models for tactical deconfliction at a CVPR 2026 workshop
GWU presented fine-tuned large language models as interpretable deconfliction policies for small drones at the CVPR 2026 MEIS workshop in Denver.
Read more: Language models for tactical deconfliction at a CVPR 2026 workshop
Invited talk
Tony Boci of L3Harris on ADS-B spoofing
An invited seminar on ADS-B spoofing, closely related to the team’s work on Remote ID spoofing detection.
Outreach
ROADS “From Earth to Venus” rover challenge
UT Austin team members helped students program rovers across simulated planetary terrain at a challenge hosted by UT’s Center for Space Research.
Publication
AI-synthesized ATC speech study presented at ICNS 2026
GWU presented a multidimensional evaluation of synthetic air traffic controller speech at the Integrated Communications, Navigation and Surveillance Conference in Herndon, Virginia.
Read more: AI-synthesized ATC speech study presented at ICNS 2026
Outreach
UT Austin researchers at STEM Girl Day
Team members led hands-on activities on robotic hands, programming RC cars in Python, and binary encoding for K–8 students.
Publication
FlyTrap presented at NDSS 2026
UC Irvine’s first security analysis of camera-based autonomous target tracking in drones drew wide media attention.
Milestone
Dennis Iannicca joins as NASA technical monitor
The team welcomed Dennis Iannicca as its NASA technical monitor, succeeding Vincent Varouh.
Publication
Two security surveys published at AIAA SciTech 2026
Team-wide surveys map the cyber threats and defenses for eVTOL aircraft and Advanced Air Mobility, and for small UAS and UAS Traffic Management.
Read more: Two security surveys published at AIAA SciTech 2026
2025
Publication
Vanderbilt and Collins present explainable assurance at ERSA
Joint work on design-time explainability of assurance cases and trade spaces was presented at the ERSA workshop of the IEEE Real-Time Systems Symposium in Boston.
Read more: Vanderbilt and Collins present explainable assurance at ERSA
Invited talk
Joseph Rios of SkyGrid on UTM and AAM architectures
Joseph Rios introduced current UTM and AAM architectures and operational concepts, and shared his perspective on their security concerns.
Event
Year 1 annual review at Vanderbilt and Tennessee State
A two-day meeting in Nashville with presentations from every team, a student poster session, and planning for Year 2.
Outreach
First cohort of NVCC research interns completes summer at GWU
Four Northern Virginia Community College students spent the summer in GWU’s lab, building a drone simulation testbed and studying control-link security alongside graduate students.
Read more: First cohort of NVCC research interns completes summer at GWU
Invited talk
ANRA Technologies on the role of UTM service providers
ANRA Technologies spoke with the team about how UAS service suppliers operate within UTM and Advanced Air Mobility.
Invited talk
NASA Glenn presents commercial aviation communication architecture
Colleagues from NASA Glenn Research Center briefed the team on the communication architecture of commercial aviation, informing our analysis of drone and UTM data links.
Invited talk
Collins Aerospace briefing on flight management system security
An engineer from Collins Aerospace’s avionics business gave the team a deep dive on flight management systems and their security considerations.
2024
Event
Project kick-off at GWU
Investigators, the NASA ULI program director, and the NASA technical monitor met in Washington, DC to plan the first year of research.
Milestone
NASA selects “Securing High-Density Urban Airspaces” for a University Leadership Initiative award
An eight-institution team led by The George Washington University begins a three-year effort to secure drone and air-taxi operations in dense urban airspace.