Holy Cross Alumnus Named Inaugural Fellow at Information Trust Institute

Gabriel Weaver ’04 was recently named the first-ever Herman M. Dieckamp Post-Doctoral Fellow by the Information Trust Institute (ITI) at the University of Illinois, an institution that provides national leadership combining research and education with industrial outreach in secure information systems. The fellow “funds a researcher in the area of trustworthy systems, particularly those that protect critical infrastructure,” and was made possible by a gift from Illinois alumnus Herman Dieckamp.

During his fellowship, Weaver will design better ways to assess the safety and security of cyber-physical systems. This research will be done in conjunction with other work funded through the Critical Infrastructure Resilience Institute, a Department of Homeland Security Center of Excellence at Illinois.

"The Dieckamp fellowship not only enables me to explore new theoretical approaches to evaluate cyber-physical systems’ security, but allows me to apply and evaluate such approaches in the context of critical infrastructure, which affect us on a daily basis,” Weaver said in a press release issued by ITI . “Mr. Dieckamp’s award not only enables me to pursue my intellectual passions in a world-class research environment, but to direct that passion in a manner that has the potential to serve others. I am extremely honored and grateful for this opportunity."

While a student at Holy Cross, Weaver majored in classics and mathematics. He received a Ph.D. in computer science at Dartmouth College, and interned at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Lincoln Laboratory. He also served as a non-residential fellow at Harvard University, during which time he designed an XML vocabulary to encode ancient Greek mathematical diagrams for the Archimedes Palimpsest project.