Pitt’s Mai Abdelhakim Receives IEEE Excellent Service Award
Photo above: Mai Abdelhakim with Danda Rawat.
The University of Pittsburgh’s Mai Abdelhakim was recognized with an Excellent Service Award at three co-located Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) conferences held in downtown Pittsburgh on November 11 – 14.
Serving on the organizing committee as Finance and Local Arrangement Co-Chair, Abdelhakim, an associate professor in the Swanson School of Engineering’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, played an essential role in organizing these co-located conferences and their seven associated workshops:
- 7th IEEE International Conference on Trust, Privacy and Security in Intelligent Systems, and Applications (IEEE TPS 2025)
- 7th IEEE International Conference on Cognitive Machine Intelligence (IEEE CogMI 2025)
- 11th IEEE International Conference on Collaboration and Internet Computing (IEEE CIC)
“I'm honored to have had this opportunity to help organize such a large event and to receive this award. I am deeply grateful to the conference’s steering committee for this recognition and to the organizing committee for their collaboration and support; together, they made the conferences such a success,” said Abdelhakim. “It’s been inspiring to connect and collaborate with so many peers and to help build a transdisciplinary community.”
Abdelhakim, who is also a Space, High-Performance & Resilient Computing (SHREC) faculty member and whose research intersects with cybersecurity, networking, and critical infrastructure in space and on Earth, founded the IEEE Workshop on Security and Resiliency of Critical Infrastructure and Space Technologies (IEEE SR-CIST) last year and co-chaired the workshop again this year. IEEE SR-CIST is one of the seven workshops co-located with the three conferences.
At the IEEE SR-CIST workshop, participants explored new challenges, evolving technology, and innovative approaches necessary to secure infrastructure on Earth, such as energy and transportation systems, and in space. The program featured a keynote delivered by Greg Shannon, fellow and chief cybersecurity scientist at the Idaho National Laboratory, and an invited talk by Sekar Kulandaivel, a research engineer at Bosch. It also included a dedicated panel on operational technology (OT) security, highlighting the unique risks and protections required for OT environments.
“The workshop brought together a diverse group of leaders from industry, academia, and national laboratories to share new research and explore ways to design resiliency into critical systems,” said Abdelhakim.
She added, “Across the conferences, there were important discussions from many perspectives about AI and large language models, exploring how these technologies can be used to enhance security as well as the risks they introduce.”
“Mai’s efforts showcase her leadership in the community and her commitment to advancing security initiatives,” said Alan George, Department Chair, R&H Mickle Endowed Chair, NSF SHREC Space Center Director, and professor of electrical and computer engineering who is helping to lead the Pitt Space Initiative. “She is advancing important progress in space security research, contributing to a field that remains in critical need of innovation and growth.”