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The Mathematical Sciences' Role in Homeland Security: Proceedings of a Workshop (2004)

Chapter: Welcome and Overview of Sessions, April 26

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Suggested Citation:"Welcome and Overview of Sessions, April 26." National Research Council. 2004. The Mathematical Sciences' Role in Homeland Security: Proceedings of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10940.
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Suggested Citation:"Welcome and Overview of Sessions, April 26." National Research Council. 2004. The Mathematical Sciences' Role in Homeland Security: Proceedings of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10940.
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Suggested Citation:"Welcome and Overview of Sessions, April 26." National Research Council. 2004. The Mathematical Sciences' Role in Homeland Security: Proceedings of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10940.
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Suggested Citation:"Welcome and Overview of Sessions, April 26." National Research Council. 2004. The Mathematical Sciences' Role in Homeland Security: Proceedings of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10940.
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Suggested Citation:"Welcome and Overview of Sessions, April 26." National Research Council. 2004. The Mathematical Sciences' Role in Homeland Security: Proceedings of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10940.
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Suggested Citation:"Welcome and Overview of Sessions, April 26." National Research Council. 2004. The Mathematical Sciences' Role in Homeland Security: Proceedings of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10940.
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Peter Bicke! "Opening Remarks," April 26 Transcript of Remarks Summary of Remarks Video Presentation Peter Bickers research spans a number of areas. In his work on semiparametric models (he is a co-author of the recent book Efficient and Adaptive Estimation for Semiparametric Models), he uses asymptotic theory to guide development and assessment of such models. He has also studied hidden Markov models, which are important in such diverse fields as speech recognition and molecular biology from the point of view of how well the method of maximum likelihood performs. Recently he has become involved in developing empirical statistical models for genomic sequences. He is a co-author of the text Mathematical Statistics: Basic Ideas and Selected Topics. He is past president of the Bernoulli Society and of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, a MacArthur fellow, and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the National Academy of Sciences. .~..~ ~:~

6 DR. BICKEL: Ladies and gentlemen, I think we had better get started. As usual we are running a little bit late, but that is fine. Welcome. I am Peter Bickel. I am Chair of the Board on Mathematical Sciences and Applications of the National Research Council, a Board whose charge in part is to see what the mathematical sciences can do for the nation and of course, also, what the nation can do for the mathematical sciences. When we proposed this workshop it was just 2 months after September 11, and we and most mathematical scientists in common with our fellow citizens want to help protect our country against terrorism. We realized that although the mathematical sciences play a key role in most of the defenses that could be mounted against terrorism this was not appreciated by most of our fellow mathematical scientists, as well as many of the agencies working on homeland security. So, we decided to try to do something about the situation, and with the generous assistance of the DOE, the National Science Foundation, National Security Agency, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Office of Naval Research and DARPA and Microsoft we have convened this workshop. 6

7 So, what is the element that makes the mathematical sciences have a central role? Preventing or minimizing the effect of terrorist activity requires learning as much as possible about future terrorist plans or about the nature of a current terrorist attack. Mathematics, operations research statistics and computer science provide the fundamental tools for extracting relevant information from the flood of data of all types that our senses receive. We want to know about people moving, money moving, materials moving and so on. This data may be in the form of numbers and text that is then subject to the techniques known under the names of data mining or unsupervised learning or pattern recognition. That is the subject of this first session. The data may be in the form of voice messages or video images corrupted by noise, and it is then subject to mathematical techniques which extract the true sounds or images from the corrupted form in which it is received. That is largely the subject of Session Three. Information bearing on what may happen often comes from several sources simultaneously, for instance, modern communications, zone images, intelligence data. Putting such data together is the subject of Session Five. 7

8 Terrorists can encrypt their communications, and we need to decrypt them. Conversely you want them not to know about our knowledge and actions. That is the subject of Session Four. Finally in the domain of biothreats we may be faced not with isolated cases but with full-blown epidemics of unknown origin. Stopping these and tracing their origin as quickly as possible on the basis of information gleaned from the pathogens, geography, speed of transmission, etc., is the subject of Session Two. Of course, there is a great deal of overlap between the subjects in these sessions. The synergy achieved by bringing these different groups of researchers together is also one of our goals. We have been fortunate that a collection of distinguished speakers with expertise in each of these areas agreed to give expository talks, that a number of distinguished mathematical scientists not working in these areas have agreed to act as discussants, and that a number of distinguished officers of the federal agencies concerned with homeland security have agreed to chair these sessions. As you see we have left plenty of time for discussion. We hope that these discussions will lead to 8

9 future research and contributions by the mathematical science community to these questions . I encourage the various federal agency representatives, I am glad to see are in attendance to help point the way towards this future work I hope and expect to see two goals achieved, appreciation by mathematical scientists of the important contributions that they make to homeland security and appreciation by the federal agencies of the important role of the mathematical scientists in the campaign for homeland security. I will now turn to the chair of the first session, Jim S chat z . 9

10 Welcome and Overview of Sessions Peter Bicke! Dr. Bicke! welcomect the participants to the workshop anct spoke about how important it is for both the mathematics community anct the security community to uncterstanct anct appreciate the role that the mathematical sciences play in security. Mathematics, operations research, statistics, anct computer science provide the fundamental tools for extracting relevant information from the flood of data of all types that our senses receive. The techniques to be ctiscussect are used to search and sort data, stop and trace disease outbreaks, extract true data from a message complicated by noise, encrypt and decrypt messages, and pull together data from disparate sources. Dr. Bicke] mentioned how fortunate we were to have such a ctistinguishect group of participants and said that he hoped the discussions Doubt react to future research and contributions by the mathematical science community to questions cleating with security. 10

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Mathematical sciences play a key role in many important areas of Homeland Security including data mining and image analysis and voice recognition for intelligence analysis, encryption and decryption for intelligence gathering and computer security, detection and epidemiology of bioterriost attacks to determine their scope, and data fusion to analyze information coming from simultaneously from several sources.

This report presents the results of a workshop focusing on mathematical methods and techniques for addressing these areas. The goal of the workshop is to help mathematical scientists and policy makers understand the connections between mathematical sciences research and these homeland security applications.

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