This year’s Fiscal Year 2023 government funding bill contains significant resources to support important Kentucky institutions and programs. Utilizing his role as Senate Republican Leader and as a senior member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Sen. McConnell advocated on behalf of the University of Louisville in this year’s government funding process. That includes his support of the NSA’s cyber workforce training initiative, which has funded educational programming at the University of Louisville.

“It’s an honor to return to my alma mater and announce that NSA’s cyber workforce training initiative, which has made landmark investments in educational programming at UofL, will once again receive robust resources from this fiscal year’s government funding bill. UofL is at the center of the growing cybersecurity field, benefitting the Commonwealth’s economy and our country’s national security. I look forward to more students taking part in this program and entering the workforce with the skillset needed to succeed in the 21st century,” said Sen. McConnell.

UofL launched its Cybersecurity Workforce Certificate in 2020 thanks to $6.2 million in funding from the NSA as a pilot for a national program supported by Sen. McConnell to train a qualified cybersecurity workforce. The UofL program so far has enrolled more than 200 students, with an emphasis on training military veterans and first responders in health care cybersecurity and logistics.

“The need for highly skilled cybersecurity professionals to protect our information systems is increasing rapidly. The University of Louisville is leading the way to meet this need in developing our innovative cybersecurity workforce training program and assembling a coalition of universities to support and replicate this training on a national level,” said Lori Stewart Gonzalez, interim president of UofL. “We are grateful to Sen. McConnell for supporting this and other programs with additional funding, and for his advocacy on behalf of UofL and Kentucky.”

UofL’s cybersecurity certificate program includes online learning, hands-on applied learning labs at all levels and gamification components, along with online technology industry badging from Microsoft, IBM and Google. Students gain expertise in artificial intelligence, robotics process automation, blockchain, internet of things (IoT), machine learning and other areas to earn individual badges throughout the certificate’s 24 modules.

“With technology continuing to become more of an integral piece of our everyday lives, a strong cybersecurity industry and workforce are the most important protections we have to ensure secure businesses and critical infrastructure across the Commonwealth and nation,” said Kevin Gardner, UofL’s executive vice president for research and innovation. “As a top research institution, UofL is proud to lead the charge on this important work through groundbreaking and unparalleled research, innovation and academic programs. We appreciate Sen. McConnell’s support for advancing cybersecurity technology and growing our cybersecurity workforce.”

UofL is partnering with corporations, including logistics companies, health care providers and others, as well as other colleges and universities to create a national cybersecurity training coalition. UofL’s university partners include Kentucky Community and Technical Colleges, University of North Florida, University of Arkansas – Little Rock, City University of Seattle, Kentucky State University, Simmons College, City University of New York, Kennesaw State University, Hood College and Northwest Missouri State University. The University of West Florida and Purdue University Northwest also are building university coalitions for cybersecurity workforce training.

“This new funding can allow UofL and the other lead universities to leverage resources and initiate cooperation for the good of the entire cybersecurity national community,” said Sharon Kerrick, associate professor and assistant vice president, UofL Digital Transformation Center.

Following the initial $6.2 million in funding to launch the UofL program in 2020, the university received an additional $2.3 million to expand it to include logistics and train-the-trainer components in which students are trained to instruct others in their organizations.

The UofL provides future-focused curricula and educational tools to help train the workforce in fast-growing technology areas by integrating the best features of industry and academic institution relationships.

Backed by a new roughly $500,000 grant from the U.S. Economic Development Administration, the center will provide research, assessment, recommendations and workforce development to industries looking to adopt — or adapt to — the disruptive technology at the core of the fourth industrial revolution.��

UofL researcher Faisal Aqlan, who runs the center with colleagues Lihui Bai, Kunal Kate and Will Metcalf, said this revolution — also known as or Enterprise 4.0. — has the potential to radically transform a number of industries, and the benefits will go to companies that plan ahead.������

“Think of a smart factory, where all the machines can talk to each other and anticipate or even address problems,” said Aqlan, a center co-director and associate professor of industrial engineering at the . “Similar changes have happened in logistics and healthcare, where smart, connected technologies have helped increase productivity and accuracy, lower labor costs and improve safety. These technologies can greatly improve operations, but they have to be implemented correctly.”��

According to a recent , just 10% of companies had a long-range strategy for integrating these technologies — and those companies were innovating and growing faster. A full two thirds of companies surveyed had no formal strategy at all.������

“Strategy is absolutely critical to success in leveraging these technologies,” said Bai, a center co-director who also leads UofL’s Logistics and Distribution Institute (LoDI). “Our goal is to help companies understand where they are in terms of readiness —�� maybe they’re missing infrastructure or the workforce that’s needed to integrate and maintain. Then, UofL researchers will give them a solid roadmap to where they want to go.”����

CORE4.0 will engage three industry sectors including manufacturing, logistics and healthcare, through partnership with Western Kentucky University, Metals Innovation Initiative (Mi2) and Louisville Healthcare CEO Council. The center draws on the combined research strength of the UofL’s LoDI and the , with the industry expertise of the Louisville Healthcare CEO Council and the Metals Innovation Initiative (MI2).��

“UofL and its partners represent significant earned experience and strength in each of these sectors, and with cutting-edge technology,” said Metcalf, a co-investigator and associate vice president in the UofL Office of Research and Innovation. “We look forward to working with industry to leverage that strength to enter Industry 4.0.”������

Industry leaders interested in working with the Center for Organizational Readiness toward Enterprise 4.0 can contact uofllogistics@louisville.edu.����

“It would be impossible for us to fulfill our mission of innovating the aging experience without first ensuring the safety and health of our older adult patients and staff during the pandemic,” said Anna Faul, executive director of the Trager Institute. “This partnership with LoDI has been beneficial for us to understand what we need to do to return to normal capacity when the positivity rates are at a level that would be absolutely safe for our patients and staff.”

Through the collaboration, LoDI and Trager Institute leaders established capacity and utilization estimates to allow Trager staff to transition from telehealth and work-from-home policies to hybrid policies allowing a return to in-clinic visits for patients and location-based work for Trager students, faculty and staff.

LoDI, housed at the , is dedicated to developing innovative delivery processes for industries including manufacturing, service and health care. Students and faculty at LoDI recently worked with businesses in the oil and refinery field, a public utility and the .

For the project at the Trager Institute, a team led by Lihui Bai, co-director of LoDI, used a simulation model to determine a safe volume of traffic that allows proper social distancing at the Optimal Aging Clinic. In particular, the study team, which included Monica Gentili, Arsalan Paleshi and LoDI Fellow Shahab Sadri, simulated operations at the clinic to determine the maximum number of clinical staff, patients, faculty and students, as well as Trager faculty and staff, that safely could be present in the building.

The results of the study will serve as a guide for Trager Institute leadership in determining the percentage of clinic appointments that must be kept virtual and the number of learners and institute staff and faculty who safely could resume on-site activities. The clinic will implement the guidelines provided by the study once coronavirus infection rates in the community reach an acceptable level to resume in-person visits.

“Our study found that patient and staff movements at key common areas throughout the facility are within the safety measures of a COVID-19 environment,” Bai said. “We were happy to be a part of this collaboration by applying our simulation model to study the traffic patterns at the Optimal Aging Clinic. We look forward to extending this study to evaluate other operations measures such as utilization and possible improvements in a joint future research with the team at the Trager Institute.”

“We are grateful to the LoDI team for their expertise in helping us determine safe and efficient operating procedures at the clinic,” Faul said.