This summer, the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) Cyber SMART Center announced its inaugural Distinguished Dissertation Award recipients.
The center’s focus is advancing holistic, multidisciplinary research across the full spectrum of cyber and compute fields, including its SMART acronym—encompassing Science, Management, Applications, Regulation, and Training. For the award, the researcher’s dissertation was required to bridge two or more areas across the computer and information sciences disciplines, and their dissertation had to be defended during the 2025-2026 academic year.
“We created this award to recognize outstanding doctoral research across the full spectrum of cyber,” said Jarek Nabrzyski, past Executive Director of NSF Cyber SMART; associate vice president for research for special initiatives at the University of Notre Dame. “This multidisciplinary work represents both the center’s mission as well as the growing complexities computer and information scientists will have to work to solve in their careers.”
At most, one awardee from each academic institution member of the center can be selected. The recipients will receive a commemorative plaque and will be formally recognized at the Fall 2026 NSF CyberSMART Industry Advisory Board meeting. The award recipients have been invited to present their research to the leadership and partners of the NSF Cyber SMART center at that time.
Elise G. Annett, School of Continuing Studies, Georgetown University
From the Georgetown University School of Continuing Studies, Elise G. Annett was awarded the NSF CyberSMART Distinguished Dissertation Award for her dissertation work on human accountability in AI-enabled command systems—advancing the model of Synthesized Command and Control (SYNTHComm).
Annett is a Research Fellow for AI Systems, Disruptive Technology, and Future Warfare at the Institute for National Strategic Studies of the National Defense University, Department of War.
Swapna Krishnakumar Radha, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Notre Dame
From the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Notre Dame, Swapna Krishnakumar Radha was awarded the NSF CyberSMART Distinguished Dissertation Award for her dissertation titled “Formal and Decentralized Framework for Verifiable Trust: Self-Sovereign Identity, Blockchain Provenance, and Hardware-Rooted Assurance.”
Radha is actively exploring research, academic, and industry opportunities in trustworthy AI, AI security, RAG systems, cybersecurity, and provenance-aware AI infrastructure. She is extending her work on verifiable trust into AI by developing secure, crypto-anchored approaches that help ensure information is authentic, current, authorized, and safe to use. She is also researching human-AI collaboration frameworks for sensitive care settings that augment human expertise, preserve therapist and caregiver agency, and prioritize trust, explainability, safety, and meaningful human oversight.
Md Hasan Shahriar, Department of Computer Science, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
From the Virginia Tech Department of Computer Science, Md Hasan Shahriar was awarded the NSF CyberSMART Distinguished Dissertation Award for his dissertation work on secure and trustworthy AI-enabled cyber-physical systems.
Shahriar has accepted an appointment as assistant professor in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) Department at the University of Arkansas.
Learn more about the NSF Cyber SMART Graduate Student Award here.
To learn more about the NSF Cyber SMART Center, please visit: https://cybersmartcenter.org/
Originally published at research.nd.edu by Christina Clark on June 30, 2026. Photos provided.