Interview with Mr. Paul Scalise—Winner of the Future Internet Best Paper Award

We are honoured to announce that Mr. Paul Scalise has been selected as the winner of the Future Internet Best Paper Award 2024.

“A Systematic Survey on 5G and 6G Security Considerations, Challenges, Trends, and Research Areas”
by Paul Scalise, Matthew Boeding, Michael Hempel, Hamid Sharif, Joseph Delloiacovo and John Reed
Future Internet 2024, 16(3), 67; https://doi.org/10.3390/fi16030067

The following is an interview with Mr. Paul Scalise:

1. Congratulations on winning the Future Internet 2024 Best Paper Award! Could you please briefly introduce yourself and what led you to write this review?

My name is Paul Scalise and I am honored to receive this award from MDPI Future Internet for the best paper of 2024. I am currently a PhD student at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln studying Computer Engineering in the Advanced Telecommunications Engineering Lab (TEL), headed by my advisor Dr. Hamid Sharif. My research interests have revolved around the tight relationship between hardware and software along with privacy and security of computing systems. With 5G becoming ever more important across the world, this review was a great place to share perspective of the current state of the art and future considerations for these complex architectures.

2. With so many studies published in this area, how did you decide which works to include and how to structure the narrative?

I thought that bringing a systematic viewpoint for this review was super important for readers to get a full picture of all the different aspects of security in 5G and future 6G systems. In doing so, I believe it allows for better understanding and enables researchers to tackle open research questions.

3. What emerging trend or underexplored direction did you uncover while surveying the literature that surprised you most?

In this study we emphasized the applications and considerations of zero-trust architectures in future cellular networks. This topic had been gaining ground in other research areas, and I thought that this was important to incorporate as a main portion of this study and how ZT principals will be increasingly valuable in the near future.

4. How do you hope this review will guide researchers or practitioners who are new to this field?

I hope our study allows newer researchers in our field, and people from adjacent fields, to understand the impacts of how security within complex cellular systems are vital to end user protection. Security of any system must be a forefront thought while designing and conceptualizing future networks to allow for a prosperous ecosystem that respects the users, maintainers, operators, and anyone in-between.

5. Based on your experience preparing and submitting this review to Future Internet, what suggestions do you have for us to improve the review article submission and peer review process?

Overall, the process went smoothly. I appreciate that there is some leniency in the time for responding to reviewers when some revisions take longer than expected.

6. What does receiving this award mean to you, and is there anyone you would like to acknowledge?

This award is greatly meaningful in that it reflects the hard work of our team at UNL. Writing this review would have been impossible for me without the diligent efforts of the leaders within my lab: Dr. Hamid Sharif, Dr. Michael Hempel, and Dr. Matthew Boeding. I also thank our partner authors from Belcan for their input from their industry knowledge. A huge thank you as well goes to my family and friends for their continued support and belief in my abilities.