: And then what were you doing the research for? A doctorate?

D’Ovidio: It was for my dissertation work. Part of the research process allowed me to get other types of data that I’m now starting to look at to answer some interesting and important questions.

: Are you in the process or writing any books or other writing projects?

D’Ovidio: Actually, Drexel University has partnered with East Stroudsburg University and Rider University on a research project that’s developing a research institute on computer crime and computer forensics. So, we just received our first round of funding, a million dollars from the federal government, to get that off the ground for this coming fiscal year. And we’ll know shortly if we were successful in getting our renewal. The goal there will be to set up an institute that has three area objectives: one, training for law enforcement on computer crime investigations and forensics; two will be the development of tools, the next generation of forensics tools that allows investigators to investigate crimes in cyber space. The third area will be a degree program in computer forensics. So, that will be the last area we focus on because we see the immediate needs of the law enforcement community really lie in tool development and training more than degree programs. So I would say that’s more of a long term goal whereas the initial focus of the institute will be those first two areas.

: Are you going to help develop the training? Or are you putting everything together yourself? What is your role? Did you come up with the idea?

D’Ovidio: I can’t take full credit. There’s a faculty member or two in engineering from Drexel that wrote the proposal with me. Again, it’s a three university collaboration, but the proposals came out of Drexel. I’ve been assigned the responsibility to coordinate the activities on Drexel’s campus and be the liaison to the center. We’ll have an advisory board which will consist of a member from each university. I will be Drexel’s representative on that board, Ryder will have one, and East Stroudsburg will have one. In choosing the partners, we’ve really identified universities that have specific expertise where Drexel doesn’t. For instance, Ryder has a very established research program and educational program in forensic accounting, which is very very useful when you talk about fraud. Most of the fraud that we’re seeing, especially large scale fraud, deals with electronic transfers and funds. So, going into this project without expertise in that area, we would be deficient, so we specifically sought them out. Drexel is a center for national security, an NSA center of excellence. East Stroudsburg is as well, but Drexel’s focus is in terms of research, whereas East Stroudsburg’s NSA center of excellence was a function of their computer security program. So, they’re geared towards the education aspect, and they have a very successful computer security curriculum on the graduate level. So, we sought partnership with them because of that success in that area.

: And where will the center be located?

D’Ovidio: That still has yet to be determined. The appropriation officially went to East Stroudsburg, for a variety of reasons why. In terms of the physical presence, during the first year we will probably not have an office with a sign on the door saying “Cyber Crime and Forensics Institute” just because that’s a matter of resources; that takes money. We have a million dollar appropriation that is great, and we’re very happy that we got a million dollars, but we want to make sure that we use the money where it’s necessary. So, we look for physical locations maybe in the second, third year. But we plan to have a presence on all three campuses. The goal will be to develop collaborative research projects among the three campuses, but also each campus is going to have their own agenda that they’re pursuing.

: So it’s going to be a center but, at the same time, it will be a little bit separated?

D’Ovidio: Yes. For instance, I’m working on a project right now with a colleague from Anthropology, looking at child pornography subculture. That could be a project that’s very well funded by the institute, but only Drexel people are working on it. And then we might take that funding as seed funding to develop a larger project out of it, toward which we’ll apply for a grant through Drexel. So, it doesn’t necessarily have to go through the center, but the fact that there is a center, if we want to pull someone from East Stroudsburg onto the project, the center would be the mechanism through which we pull them. There will be some strong research times. I mean, we do that so we can capitalize on the strengths that lie elsewhere and not at Drexel. But I think where the university collaboration will be very significant and very pronounced will be through the degree program. Ultimately, the big vision for this master’s degree in computer forensics will be a three university campus program where some of the courses will be taught by faculty from East Stroudsburg, some from Drexel, and some from Ryder.