Renewal: Scholarship for Service @ Carnegie Mellon

Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh PA

Investigators

Abstract

Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), a designated National Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense Education, Research and Cyber Operations, proposes to continue and expand its participation in the CyberCorps(R): Scholarship for Service (SFS) program to prepare highly-qualified cybersecurity professionals for entry into the government workforce. This project will prepare the nation's cybersecurity workforce through a rigorous educational experience shaped by an interdisciplinary master's programs in Information Security; participation in learning and research communities with peer institutions, enriching meta-curricular initiatives; and community outreach opportunities. The SFS program funds projects that address cybersecurity education and workforce development, including funding to award scholarships to students in cybersecurity. In return for their scholarships, recipients will work after graduation for a Federal, State, Local, or Tribal Government organization in a position related to Cybersecurity for a period equal to the length of the scholarship. To date, the U.S. federal government has hired 198 Carnegie Mellon SFS graduates who have gone on to serve and protect the nation's information infrastructure at the Department of Defense, National Security Agency, Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDC) and many other federal organizations. Academic programs in cybersecurity feature technical, interdisciplinary coursework that incorporates business and policy perspectives from top-ranked colleges in engineering, computer science, business, and policy. CMU's CyLab, a security and privacy research institute, serves as a focal point for the wealth of security and privacy activity across the SFS program. CyLab is committed to interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary research and education, with 109 faculty from many departments, including Computer Science, Institute for Software Research, Heinz College of Public Policy, Information Networking Institute, Electrical and Computer Engineering and many more. CyLab is a hub for research that touches technical and societal problems, economic issues, and policy questions. Leading cybersecurity researchers, investigators and teaching faculty work side by side with SFS students to explore and advance critical areas such as software security, cryptography, reverse engineering, privacy, biometrics and cyber forensics. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.