Introducing the Hacking for Diplomacy Newsletter
Welcome to the first edition of the Hacking for Diplomacy (H4Diplomacy) Newsletter. H4Diplomacy is a for-credit university class that offers the Department of State (DOS) the opportunity to collaborate with academia and talented student teams to validate problems and develop innovative solutions. The program is sponsored by the DOS Bureau of Diplomatic Security.
In this newsletter, we'll be providing updates to keep you informed about the ins and outs of the program over the course of the Spring 2023 semester. A new issue will be published to detail the students' progress at major semester milestones. Keep an eye out for invitations to attend mid-course presentations in March and final presentations in April!
Spring 2023 H4Diplomacy Problems
H4Diplomacy has officially kicked off its fifth semester! There are three teams, comprising 13 students, at Rochester Institute of Technology. Students are already hard at work getting to the heart of their chosen problems sponsored by the Office of Security Technology and the Cyber and Technology Security Directorate. Check out the Spring 2023 H4Diplomacy problems being worked on below.
Students participated in an interview training workshop during the second class session to learn about customer discovery and observation techniques, interview data analysis, and ethical considerations.
Office of Security Technology Problem: Drone Detection Dilemma
Students: 5
Problem Sponsor: Tyler Wood
Description: Security engineering officers in U.S. Embassy Baghdad need a better way to detect and locate non-US autonomous drones within 1/2 kilometer of the US Embassy Baghdad in order to prevent adversaries from surveilling and harming the people inside the embassy.
Office of Security Technology Problem: Locating Imminent Danger
Students: 4
Problem Sponsor: Mario May
Description: On-site security personnel at U.S. Government overseas offices need a way to quickly identify the location of imminent danger when the emergency notification system is triggered in order to create an escape plan or diffuse the threat before it causes harm to human lives and property.
Cyber and Technology Security Directorate Problem
Students: 4
Problem Sponsors: Nick Swindell, Danh Nguyen-Huynh, and Jacob Trigoboff
Description: Network defenders in the Office of Cyber Monitoring and Operations need a better way to query and correlate data in a hybrid and multi-cloud data ecosystem in order to develop analytics capability at the network defender level and inform insight-driven decisions on cybersecurity incident response at the senior leadership level.
H4Diplomacy Student Update
Students are now at the critical (and fun!) part of the semester... beneficiary discovery.
With their problem sponsor's help, student teams will be conducting at least 50 interviews throughout the months of February through April in a process called “beneficiary discovery.” By using this process, students will try to develop a 360-degree understanding of the problem and find the most viable, feasible, and desirable solution to tackle it.
From there, students will test their hypothesis to validate assumptions built around the challenge and its ecosystem. This leads to rigorous, evidence-based solution crafting.
A visual overview of the entire H4Diplomacy timeline. Currently, student teams are conducting interviews through a process called "beneficiary discovery" to validate criteria for solution pathways.
