Pitt cybersecurity centers schedule Aug. 11 workshop on AI and critical-infrastructure threats

The University of Pittsburgh’s Pitt Cyber Energy Center and Pitt Cyber will hold their second Transforming Cybersecurity Workshop on Aug. 11, 2026, bringing government, industry and academic experts together to discuss cybersecurity technology and policy affecting critical infrastructure.

The Pittsburgh event is planned around risks involving water, energy and industrial-control networks. Those systems are used to monitor or operate physical infrastructure, making their security a topic that spans both digital systems and essential services.

Focus on infrastructure and policy

The workshop is a scheduled forum, not a report of a completed study or a finding about a specific local system. The University of Pittsburgh announcement describes the program as addressing cybersecurity risks and policy questions involving the identified infrastructure sectors.

Water, energy and industrial-control networks are the three areas named in the announcement. The program is intended to examine cybersecurity technology alongside policy, rather than treating the issue solely as a technical problem.

Pitt Cyber’s broader work is centered on the intersection of digital technology, policy and society. Its website lists work that includes public algorithms and election security, providing context for the center’s role in research and public-facing discussions of cybersecurity issues.

AI discussion is prospective

RAND senior information scientist Chad Heitzenrater is scheduled to discuss how advanced artificial intelligence could reshape cybersecurity economics. That planned presentation concerns potential effects of AI; the announcement does not establish that those effects have already occurred or that their impact is settled.

The event is not described as a deployment of a new security system, a test of a prototype or evidence of improved real-world security performance. It also does not report a breach of Pittsburgh infrastructure or identify an active threat to a particular local network.

What is known before the event

The Aug. 11 session is the second annual Transforming Cybersecurity Workshop. The announcement identifies the two Pitt hosts, the infrastructure topics and Heitzenrater’s planned role, but it does not provide a full speaker roster, expected attendance or specific policy recommendations in advance.

No funding source or budget for the workshop is identified in the available announcement. Any conclusions, recommendations or outcomes will depend on the event itself and are not yet known.

For Pittsburgh, the workshop creates a local venue for experts from government, industry and academia to assess questions around cybersecurity and infrastructure. But the announced agenda should be understood as a discussion of risks and possible policy responses, rather than a final assessment of those risks.