Experts Available to Offer Insight on New Year’s Day Violence

New Year’s Day Violence: Investigations are ongoing for two violent attacks that occurred in the United States on New Year’s Day.

In New Orleans' French Quarter, 42-year-old Shamsud-Din Jabbar, an Army veteran from Texas, is accused of driving a rented pickup truck into a crowd on Bourbon Street, resulting in 15 fatalities and numerous injuries. Authorities discovered an ISIS flag and explosive devices in the vehicle and surrounding area. Later that day, a rented Tesla Cybertruck exploded outside the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas, killing the driver and injuring several bystanders. The driver was identified as 37-year-old Matthew Livelsberger, an active-duty U.S. Army Special Forces soldier.

Investigators are exploring the motives, along with possible connections between the attacks. Both incidents have heightened concern about the rising threat of domestic terrorism.

The University at Albany has experts available to speak on the New Year’s violence, including:

• Gary Ackerman, professor, College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security and Cybersecurity, focuses on understanding how terrorists and other adversaries make tactical, operational and strategic decisions, particularly regarding innovating in their use of weapons and tactics. As the founder of UAlbany’s Center for Advanced Red Teaming, Ackerman studies defensive systems and architectures, vulnerabilities, emerging threats and training of response personnel. He recently published a paper that explores the logic of rampage terrorism.

• Victor Asal, professor of political science, Rockefeller College of Public Affairs & Policy, focuses on political violence, terrorism and the choice of violence by nonstate organizational actors. He currently serves as director of UAlbany’s Center for Policy Research and is affiliated with the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), a Department of Homeland Security Center of Excellence.

• Brian Nussbaum, associate professor, College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security and Cybersecurity, focuses on cyber threats, terrorism and terrorism analysis, homeland security, risk and intelligence analysis, and critical infrastructure protection. He formerly served as a senior intelligence analyst with the New York State Office of Counter-Terrorism.