Ambassador Seminar – Agro-Cybersecurity: Securing the Integrity of Modern Food Systems
January 15, 2026 @ 2:30 pm – 3:30 pm
Thursday, January 15th, from 2:30 PM – 3:30 PM in Heep 440 and MS Teams.
Abstract
The rapid digitalization of agriculture has made data—such as drone imagery for crop monitoring, soil sensor outputs, seed genetics, and livestock genomic profiles—central to productivity and innovation. Yet, this dependence introduces new cybersecurity risks. Breaches involving seed database manipulation, theft of proprietary genomic data, or interference with drone control systems can disrupt breeding programs, alter field management decisions, and threaten national food security. This seminar highlights the growing need to secure agricultural data infrastructures, emphasizing real-world risks and the importance of cybersecurity awareness among researchers and policymakers to ensure the resilience of modern food systems.
Speaker
Dr. Shreyas Kumar leads the AGGIES Lab focusing on applied cybersecurity. Bringing over two decades of industry experience to academia, he previously held C-level and security engineering leadership positions at prominent tech companies like Uber, Adobe, Oracle, and Deserve Inc., designing critical security architectures for high-profile products and platforms. Dr. Kumar’s expertise lies in the intersection of AI and cybersecurity, cyber warfare, and security standards. He is a member of the U.S. National Committee Technical Advisory Group for the IEC/ISO Joint Technical Committee on Quantum Technologies and a Fellow of the Academy of Future Faculty at Texas A&M.