Prof. Elisa Bertino, Samuel Conte Distinguished Professor of Computer Science at Purdue University gave a Distinguished Lecture on Applying Machine Learning to securing cellular networks on 4 March 2025.

Cellular network security is more critical than ever, given the increased complexity of these networks and the numbers of applications that depend on them, including telehealth, remote education, ubiquitous robotics and autonomous vehicles, smart cities, and Industry 4.0. In her talk, Prof. Elisa Bertino first presented a comprehensive threat analysis in the context of 5G cellular networks to give a concrete example of the magnitude of the problem of cellular network security. Then, she presented two specific applications of ML techniques for the security of cellular networks. The first application focuses on the use of natural language processing techniques to the problem of detecting inconsistencies in the “natural language specifications” of cellular network protocols. The second application addresses the design of an anomaly detection system able to detect the presence of malicious base stations and determine the type of attack.  Prof. Elisa Bertino concluded her talk with a discussion on research directions.

Elisa Bertino is a Samuel Conte Distinguished Professor of Computer Science at Purdue University. She serves as Director of the Purdue Cyberspace Security Lab (Cyber2Slab). Prior to joining Purdue, she was a professor and department head at the Department of Computer Science and Communication of the University of Milan. Her recent research focuses on security and privacy of cellular networks and IoT systems, and on edge analytics for cybersecurity.  Elisa Bertino is a Fellow member of IEEE, ACM, and AAAS. She received the 2002 IEEE Computer Society Technical Achievement Award for her outstanding contributions to database systems and database security and advanced data management systems, the 2005 IEEE Computer Society Tsutomu Kanai Award for her pioneering and innovative research contributions to secure distributed systems, the 2019-2020 ACM Athena Lecturer Award, and the 2021 IEEE 2021 Innovation in Societal Infrastructure Award. She is currently serving as ACM Vice-president.

March 2025