REU Site: Undergraduate Research Experiences in Big Data Security and Privacy

Cal Poly Pomona Foundation, Inc., Pomona CA

Investigators

Abstract

This funding establishes a new Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) Site at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. This REU Site will host a diverse group of undergraduate students who will spend their summer working on cutting-edge big data security research problems in genomic data privacy, secure multiparty cloud computation, and hybrid data center security. This REU Site provides students with the opportunities to explore the challenges of big data security and privacy using state-of-the art tools and testbeds. Security and privacy issues are magnified by big data, with the diversity of data sources and formats as well as large-scale cloud infrastructures needed to support big data applications. As a result, traditional security mechanisms are not adequate and new mechanisms and policies related to the security and privacy of big data are needed. The research is led by an interdisciplinary group faculty actively engaged in cybersecurity research. The site will provide mentoring and other professional development opportunities that should impact the future academic and professional careers of the students. The site plans to attract talented undergraduate students from across the nation, particularly focusing on recruiting Hispanic and women students, groups traditionally under-represented in the computing fields. The research projects in this REU Site address new big data security and privacy problems, such as genomic data privacy protection, accelerated encryption algorithms for genomic data in acquisition, privacy preserving big data mining, secure multiparty computation on clouds, security compliance measurement in hybrid data centers, and data governance in migration among clouds. While these topics can be closely interconnected, they address security and privacy issues in different phases of the big data life cycle. The projects will use a new High Performance Computing Cluster and a student run campus data center to provide research that in both theory and application in an emerging area of research.