Burak

As critical infrastructures increasingly rely on 5G and emerging 6G connectivity, the attack surface expands in both scale and sophistication. This talk examines the security and safety challenges unique to AI-driven, wireless-connected critical infrastructure, including adversarial threats to machine learning models, spectrum-layer vulnerabilities, and the risks introduced by autonomous decision-making at the network edge. We present federated learning and distributed intelligence frameworks that enable robust, privacy-preserving anomaly detection without centralizing sensitive operational data. The talk further addresses coexistence and interference management in shared spectrum environments, and outlines a research agenda for building resilient, trustworthy 6G-enabled critical infrastructure systems.

Biography:

Burak Kantarci is a Full Professor and University Research Chair in AI-enabled Secure Networking for Smart Critical Infrastructures at the University of Ottawa, where he also directs the SCVIC and NEXTCON labs. He holds a Ph.D. from Istanbul Technical University (2009) and has authored 300+ publications. Since 2020, he has been continuously listed among the top-cited scientists in telecommunications, and research.com has ranked him among Canada’s top computer scientists. He received the 2023 IEEE ComSoc Communications Software Technical Achievement Award, the 2024-2025 George S. Glinski Award for Excellence in Research, and a Minister’s Award of Excellence from Ontario (2021). He is a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Communications Society and IEEE Systems Council, and was an ACM Distinguished Speaker (2019-2021). He chaired the IEEE Communications Systems Integration and Modeling Technical Committee (2019-2020) and has served as general/program/track chair for 30+ conferences. He is an Editor of IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials and holds editorial roles at several other journals. He is a senior member of IEEE and ACM.