Sunny Fugate
Scientific
Services offered
I am a world class research scientist and innovator with over two decades of experience in the defense industry. I specialize in cyber warfare, human factors, and advanced technologies for defensive and offensive cyber operations. I provide expert strategic consulting to help organizations address critical challenges in cyber warfare, cyber defense, and human-machine automation and autonomy. My multidisciplinary expertise, innovative research and development experience, and visionary thinking can quickly guide your company to elegant and effective solutions to complex problems in information security and cyber operations.
Throughout my career, I have led groundbreaking research programs in collaboration with organizations such as JTF-GNO, USCYBERCOM, DTRA, ONR, DARPA, NSA, OUSD, and the US Navy. As the principal investigator at the Naval Information Warfare Center (NIWC), I spearheaded more than a dozen R&D projects exploring the interplay between autonomy, cyber operations, and trust. These efforts culminated in a long-running research program on autonomous cyber defense, sponsored jointly by OUSD, NSA, ONR, and ODNI. My work has fostered the development of entirely new fields, including oppositional human factors, defensive cyber deception, and cyber psychology. By integrating insights from psychology, computer science, mathematics, and operational cyber domains, I have developed novel approaches to defending systems, networks, missions, and personnel from evolving threats.
Key areas of my research include autonomic computing, autonomous cyber operations, machine learning, game theory, human-autonomy trust and trust calibration, cyber deception, and cyber psychology, all aimed at creating adaptive, autonomous cyber systems capable of countering sophisticated adversaries. My teams have leveraged cross-domain expertise to advance how we approach cyber defense and information warfare, fundamentally shifting the paradigm in the field.
I am excited to bring my experience and passion for innovation to organizations seeking forward-thinking, multidisciplinary solutions for the challenges of cyber warfare, information security, and human-autonomy teaming in today’s dynamic security environment.
Experience
NIWC Pacific - Senior Scientific Manager for Cyber Warfare - 6yrs - Apr 2018 - Oct 2024
As a Senior Scientific and Technical Manager, I lead technical programs and research efforts in defensive and offensive cyber technology and operations. My current research programs span multiple technical fields with the goal of fundamentally changing how we defend computing systems, networks, and operations. Our current efforts focus on exploring the creation of autonomous cyber systems through the use of autonomic computing, machine learning, decentralized control, game theory, expert systems, human-autonomy trust and trust calibration, defensive deception, cyber psychology, human-systems integration, human subjects research, and cyber operations. My technical teams consist of cognitive scientists, psychologists, neuroscientists, mathematicians, data scientists, cyber operations specialists, computer scientists, and software developers with PhD level leads assigned to each of our principal research areas.
NIWC Pacific - Senior Computer Scientist - 6yrs - Sep 2012 - Apr 2018
From Sept 2012 through April 2018 I worked as a senior research scientist and technical lead for various cyber defense and cyber operations research and development efforts at the Naval Information Warfare Center, Pacific. My work focused on scientific and experimental exploration of cyber strategies and technologies -- with research teams exploring game theory of cyber operations, defensive deception and moving target defenses, software randomization and immunization, software mutation and robustness, ambient and augmented reality data visualization, the human factors of cyber security, oppositional human factors, and the cognitive effects within both defensive and offensive cyber operations.
NIWC Pacific - Electrical Engineer - 10yrs - Sep 2002 - Sep 2012
From Sept 2002 through Dec 2012, I participated in or managed numerous software development and research projects primarily related to network security, intrusion, applied artificial intelligence, but also touching on tactical communications, visual and augmented reality, and information visualization. I worked closely with several DoD organizations solving problems relating to securing and monitoring DoD networks including one of the first uses of artificial intelligence to monitor a DoD network. I have expert knowledge of network monitoring systems for intrusion detection, network auditing, and policy enforcement. Prior experience at the center has ranged from technical writing, grant proposal writing, engineering modeling, test and evaluation, and software development for telecommunications applications, data visualization, user interface design, and software configuration management.
Education
- BS - Electrical Engineering - University of Nevada, Reno - 2002
- PhD - Computer Science - University of New Mexico - 2012
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