A NASA University Leadership Initiative (ULI) project uniting eight institutions to identify, defend against, and design out cyberattacks on drones and air taxis in dense urban airspaces.https://skysec.engineering.gwu.edu/https://skysec.engineering.gwu.edu/research/separation-assurance/https://skysec.engineering.gwu.edu/research/separation-assurance/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.Sun, 20 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMTpublicationhttps://skysec.engineering.gwu.edu/news/https://skysec.engineering.gwu.edu/news/The team met at Purdue University to present Year 2 results, including student posters from NVCC interns, and to plan Year 3 demonstrations.Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMTeventhttps://skysec.engineering.gwu.edu/outreach/https://skysec.engineering.gwu.edu/outreach/Four NVCC interns studied MAVLink control-link security and built GridEye, a UTM monitoring dashboard, then presented posters at the Year 2 review.Sat, 15 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMToutreachhttps://arxiv.org/abs/2603.28561https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.28561GWU presented fine-tuned large language models as interpretable deconfliction policies for small drones at the CVPR 2026 MEIS workshop in Denver.Mon, 15 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTpublicationhttps://skysec.engineering.gwu.edu/news/https://skysec.engineering.gwu.edu/news/An invited seminar on ADS-B spoofing, closely related to the team’s work on Remote ID spoofing detection.Fri, 15 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTtalkhttps://skysec.engineering.gwu.edu/outreach/https://skysec.engineering.gwu.edu/outreach/UT Austin team members helped students program rovers across simulated planetary terrain at a challenge hosted by UT’s Center for Space Research.Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMToutreachhttps://doi.org/10.1109/icns69853.2026.11570606https://doi.org/10.1109/icns69853.2026.11570606GWU presented a multidimensional evaluation of synthetic air traffic controller speech at the Integrated Communications, Navigation and Surveillance Conference in Herndon, Virginia.Wed, 15 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTpublicationhttps://skysec.engineering.gwu.edu/outreach/https://skysec.engineering.gwu.edu/outreach/Team members led hands-on activities on robotic hands, programming RC cars in Python, and binary encoding for K–8 students.Sat, 28 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMToutreachhttps://doi.org/10.14722/ndss.2026.230904https://doi.org/10.14722/ndss.2026.230904UC Irvine’s first security analysis of camera-based autonomous target tracking in drones drew wide media attention.Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMTpublicationhttps://skysec.engineering.gwu.edu/news/https://skysec.engineering.gwu.edu/news/The team welcomed Dennis Iannicca as its NASA technical monitor, succeeding Vincent Varouh.Thu, 15 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTmilestonehttps://skysec.engineering.gwu.edu/publications/https://skysec.engineering.gwu.edu/publications/Team-wide surveys map the cyber threats and defenses for eVTOL aircraft and Advanced Air Mobility, and for small UAS and UAS Traffic Management.Mon, 12 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTpublicationhttps://skysec.engineering.gwu.edu/research/secure-architecture/https://skysec.engineering.gwu.edu/research/secure-architecture/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.Tue, 02 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMTpublicationhttps://skysec.engineering.gwu.edu/news/https://skysec.engineering.gwu.edu/news/Joseph Rios introduced current UTM and AAM architectures and operational concepts, and shared his perspective on their security concerns.Sat, 15 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMTtalkhttps://skysec.engineering.gwu.edu/news/https://skysec.engineering.gwu.edu/news/A two-day meeting in Nashville with presentations from every team, a student poster session, and planning for Year 2.Thu, 16 Oct 2025 00:00:00 GMTeventhttps://skysec.engineering.gwu.edu/outreach/https://skysec.engineering.gwu.edu/outreach/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.Fri, 15 Aug 2025 00:00:00 GMToutreachhttps://skysec.engineering.gwu.edu/news/https://skysec.engineering.gwu.edu/news/ANRA Technologies spoke with the team about how UAS service suppliers operate within UTM and Advanced Air Mobility.Tue, 15 Apr 2025 00:00:00 GMTtalkhttps://skysec.engineering.gwu.edu/news/https://skysec.engineering.gwu.edu/news/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.Sat, 15 Feb 2025 00:00:00 GMTtalkhttps://skysec.engineering.gwu.edu/news/https://skysec.engineering.gwu.edu/news/An engineer from Collins Aerospace’s avionics business gave the team a deep dive on flight management systems and their security considerations.Wed, 15 Jan 2025 00:00:00 GMTtalkhttps://skysec.engineering.gwu.edu/news/https://skysec.engineering.gwu.edu/news/Investigators, the NASA ULI program director, and the NASA technical monitor met in Washington, DC to plan the first year of research.Tue, 15 Oct 2024 00:00:00 GMTeventhttps://skysec.engineering.gwu.edu/about/https://skysec.engineering.gwu.edu/about/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.Sun, 01 Sep 2024 00:00:00 GMTmilestone