SUFFOLK, Va. — High honors were bestowed upon Old Dominion University on Wednesday by the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency.
Within the four walls of ODU's Virginia Modeling, Analysis and Simulation Center in Suffolk, crucial national security work takes place on a daily basis. There, researchers deter, detect and disrupt adversaries who mean America cyber harm.
ODU is one of four out of 10,000 companies and academic institutions that applied to receive the 2021 DCSA Award for Excellence in Counterintelligence.
ODU was recognized for extraordinary achievement in thwarting foreign adversaries' attempts to compromise or acquire U.S. defense and national security technology.
"It's all about security and keeping the research work that we do here at the university that needs to be protected," said Eric Weisel, executive director of the Virginia Modeling and Simulation Center at Old Dominion University and associate vice president for applied research.
The DCSA was formed in 2019 and is the federal government's largest security agency. "America's Gatekeeper" as the agency calls itself, conducts 2.3 million annual investigations and welcomes partnerships like the one it has with ODU.
"There are dozens, hundreds of ways to have incursions into our security framework," said Bill Lietzau, DCSA Director. "And we need everybody to be gatekeepers with us, and that's been what's kind of been demonstrated by this team here."
Although the counterintelligence work ODU is doing is very cutting-edge, the Virginia Modeling Analysis and Simulation Center dates back 25 years.
It's considered one of the world's leading research centers for computer modeling, simulation, and visualization.