Convening Expertise.

With billions of interconnected devices online and billions more in the offing, the challenge of securing our home and business networks is more critical than ever. The more interconnected and extensive our computer networks become, the more vulnerable they are to cyberattack.

With this summit, the Virginia Academy teamed up with the Commonwealth Cyber Initiative to take a snapshot of measures that cybersecurity experts from academia, industry, and government are proposing to secure the future of our networks. Speakers approached the topic from a range of viewpoints, from that of individual users to government agencies like the Federal Communications Commission. We were honored that one of the founders of the Internet, Virginia Academy member Robert Kahn, agreed to deliver the keynote address.

VASEM 2021 summit was different from previous gatherings in a number of ways. Held during the COVID quarantine, it was our first virtual summit. Equally important, it was the first summit that focused on social and cultural issues rather than on scientific, technical, or medical ones. But our topic was one that VASEM felt could not be more timely and more important.

The specific suggestions about restoring faith in science offered by our summit speakers were the result of hard-earned experience. Making personal connections with other people, they said, was paramount. While conceding that some people will continue to question evidence-based conclusions, the summit speakers all emphasized the importance of persistence.

Virginia’s Coastal Zone is extraordinarily important to the state’s economy and home to many of Virginia’s oldest communities. It is threatened by sea-level rise, which is exacerbated by land subsidence in the Chesapeake Bay area. Climate change is also increasing the variability and intensity of weather. Summit presenters forecast that the coastal zone would be subject to more routine flooding as well as more violent and damaging storms.

At the same time, they noted that sea-level rise brings with it myriad opportunities for innovation in engineering and planning as well as for constructive legislative and policymaking. The net result could be enhanced economic growth across multiple sectors and movement towards an adaptive and thus more resilient coastal community.

Perhaps the most prescient of VASEM’s summits was our 2017 edition on Emerging Infections and Preparedness. The summit featured a number of voices who would play important roles in the public response to the COVID pandemic including Lindsey Marr, an authority on airborne pathogen transmission, Rick Bright, former director of the U.S. Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Center, and Anthony Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

Speakers highlighted such topics as the increasing frequency of wildlife- and vector-borne diseases as humans infringe on formerly uninhabited areas, the effects of climate change on the ranges of these vectors, and the rapid spread of disease worldwide along global transportation networks.

Sweeping new healthcare legislation and the growing promise of personalized medicine offers the promise of improved quality of care and progress in meeting the Triple Aim of better care, lower cost, and better outcomes for patients. The summit explored such issues for policymakers as the need to keep patient records secure as medical centers moved their data systems online and the challenges that Virginia entrepreneurs faced as they sought to transfer medical technology to the marketplace.

The summit also highlighted the pace and range of healthcare research and development underway in Virginia. For instance, presenters described inexpensive methods to create drugs on demand and the use of smartphones for diagnostics and monitoring.

The 2015 VASEM summit was unique in covering two distinct but interrelated topics, vehicular transportation and unmanned aerial systems (UAS). During the morning transportation sessions, speakers discussed traffic congestion and examined the development of connected automated vehicles and discussed the need to transition to sustainable fuels.

During the UAS portion of the summit, speakers shared insights gained from creating a national UAS training and certification center at Sinclair College in Dayton, Ohio. They also highlighted the vulnerability of UAS to hackers and the steps needed to protect them from cyber threats. And they reviewed the impact of federal regulations on the UAS industry and the effectiveness of incentives for UAS research and development.

The 2015 VASEM summit was unique in covering two distinct but interrelated topics, vehicular transportation and unmanned aerial systems (UAS). During the morning transportation sessions, speakers discussed traffic congestion and examined the development of connected automated vehicles and discussed the need to transition to sustainable fuels.

During the UAS portion of the summit, speakers shared insights gained from creating a national UAS training and certification center at Sinclair College in Dayton, Ohio. They also highlighted the vulnerability of UAS to hackers and the steps needed to protect them from cyber threats. And they reviewed the impact of federal regulations on the UAS industry and the effectiveness of incentives for UAS research and development.

VASEM organized a summit on Big Data, attracting such authorities as Vint Cerf, co-inventor of the TCP/IP data packet interconnection suite, to discuss ways to use these data for society’s advantage. The presenters stressed that ever-growing flows of data from every sector of society could potentially lead to scientific discovery, technological innovation, economic growth, and improvements of personal and public health. But they also acknowledged that data flows of this diversity and magnitude were new and carried with them potential downsides.

The summit featured special sessions on the projected effect of big data on technology and industry, social science and policymaking, and health and medicine. It concluded with a session summarized the opportunities and challenges that big data posed for the citizens of the Commonwealth.