Dr. Elks' professional experience and interests over the past 20 years are in the design and assessment of dependable cyber physical systems of the type found in critical infrastructure such as nuclear power, flight control systems, medical devices, electric power and transportation. His recent research interests include; complexity awareness in the design of secure and safe systems, fault injection, Runtime Assurance Architectures, cyber threat and vulnerability analysis, and ensuring safety of autonomous systems. As such, his career has been focused on maturing and advancing the state of the art in these areas through education, innovation and technology demonstration projects. Prior to VCU, Dr. Elks was research engineer at NASA Langley Research Center. While at NASA, he was involved in research and development of advanced digital avionics and controls system technology for civil air transports. He is a member of IEEE, ANS, and ACM.