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Ryan is the Digital Identity Program Lead for the Applied Cybersecurity Division at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). In this role he coordinates digital identity projects, initiatives, and efforts to advance NIST’s standards & guidance and drive foundational research to promote innovation in digital identity. He has contributed to multiple NIST Special Publications including NIST SP 800-63 Digital Identity Guidelines. Prior to joining NIST, Ryan was a Specialist Leader at Deloitte & Touche where he spent over 10 years providing cybersecurity and identity management subject-matter insights to multiple federal agencies, including the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the General Services Administration (GSA), and NIST.

Bill Newhouse is a cybersecurity Engineer at the National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE) in the Applied Cybersecurity Division in the Information Technology Laboratory at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

His work pushes for the adoption of functional cybersecurity reference designs built from commercially available technologies in the NCCoE lab. These projects rely on establishing communities of interest with members from industry, academia, and government to gain insight and passion about the areas of cybersecurity risk that need to be addressed and result in publications known as practice guides.  Mr. Newhouse has completed practices guides focused on the hospitality, retail, and Federal sectors.

In October 2020, he began a cybersecurity collaboration with the U.S. Department of Energy to research and develop cybersecurity risk management tools for the storage, transportation, and handling of energy resources within the ports of our maritime transportation system. His responsibilities also include identifying ways to include financial services sector use case scenarios in NCCoE projects/practice guides.

Mr. Newhouse held the position of deputy director for NIST's National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education (NICE) where he promoted the use of the NICE Framework in education, training, and workforce development activities that grow the number of people who are prepared to mitigate cybersecurity risk.

Mr. Newhouse began his Federal career over 35 years ago at NSA as a cooperative education student.  During his 23 years at NSA, his work shifted from telecommunication systems to information assurance.  His final five years at NSA were spent in the Office of the Secretary of Defense initially with the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering and then with the Office of the Chief Information Officer for Identity and Information Assurance focused on cybersecurity R&D oversight and technology discovery. For over a decade, he represented OSD and then NIST at Federal cybersecurity focused R&D working groups and contributed to three different Federal cybersecurity R&D Strategic Plans.

Mr. Newhouse received a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology and a Master of Science in the Field of Telecommunications Engineering from the George Washington University.

Natascha Milesi-Ferretti is a mechanical engineer working in the Building Energy and Environment Division of NIST’s Engineering Laboratory. She has bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering from the George Washington University. Her current research focuses on both water and energy: characterizing the pressure-versus-flow relationships in plumbing systems and detecting/diagnosing performance faults in commercial heating, ventilating and air-conditioning systems. In her free time, she enjoys urban gardening, tennis and STEM outreach for elementary and middle school students.

Rich Sullivan is a Project Manager at MassMEP. Rich has held positions in engineering, quality, customer service and business development in organizations ranging from startups to Fortune 500, across vertical markets such as manufacturing, information technology, and renewable energy. In his current role, Rich explores applications for both emerging and existing technologies, as well as identifying partnership opportunities among our many manufacturing clients.

Gene Kaschak is Director of Continuous Improvement and Lean Coaching for the Manufacturers Resource Center (MRC), an MEP Center in eastern Pennsylvania. He has a background in continuous improvement, product development, manufacturing engineering, maintenance leadership, information technology and change management.

Leon Chao is a millennial raised on the mean streets of Pallet Town. He serves as a mechanical engineer in the NIST Quantum Measurement Division, building precision instrumentation such as Kibble balances and torque realizers. Recently, he has formed collaborations across the Department of Defense aimed at modernizing mass and torque metrology, and he hopes to one day see his team’s efforts result in viable commercial instruments for calibrations labs everywhere. To this day, he can be spotted still gnawing at the dinosaur ham he started on years ago …

Valeria Viteri-Pflucker is a recent graduate of Illinois Wesleyan University (IWU), where she majored in physics and minored in mathematics, religion and history. At IWU's School of Music, she also participated in wind ensemble, pep band, opera pit and more as extracurricular activities. Throughout her student career, Valeria has been active in numerous STEM societies, including the Society of Physics Students (SPS), Pi Mu Epsilon (a mathematics honor society), and SPIE. Valeria has just begun the next step of her academic journey at the University of Rochester to pursue a Ph.D. in optics.