UTD SFS Renewal: Enriching Technical Program Offerings for SFS Scholarship Program at UTD

University Of Texas At Dallas, Richardson TX

Investigators

Abstract

The University of Texas at Dallas (UTD), a National Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense Education, Cyber Security Research and Cyber Operations, will continue its participation in the CyberCorps: Scholarship for Service (SFS) program to prepare highly qualified cybersecurity professionals for entry into the government workforce. The academic program is designed to equip students with highly technical skills in cyber security with options to get exposure to other related fields including data science, emerging network technologies, and cyber security policy and management. Beyond their academic degree in a graduate level program, UTD SFS scholars are involved in government sponsored research projects and complete numerous extra-curricular education activities to gain necessary hands-on skills and expertise in their focus areas in cyber security to better prepare themselves for their future government jobs. The project also includes a significant outreach component to introduce fundamental cyber security knowledge at various levels to the general student population on UTD campus, students from other colleges and universities in the state of Texas, local K-12 institutions focusing mainly on high school students and high school CS teachers. The project team members are actively involved in national scale outreach efforts. The main goals of this project include (1) training highly qualified students in a graduate level degree programs to become domain experts in cyber security; (2) providing necessary mentoring and support to successfully place them into qualified government cyber security positions; and (3) introducing the following three new thrusts in cyber security education program based on the PIs research expertise: (i) Trustworthy Machine Learning, (ii) Advanced Network Security, and (iii) Cyber Security Policy and Risk. UTD SFS scholars are involved in government sponsored research projects and complete numerous extra-curricular education activities to gain necessary hands-on skills and expertise in their focus areas in cyber security to better prepare themselves for their future government jobs. SFS scholars are also required to involve in cyber security outreach activities including developing and delivering workshops on fundamental cyber security topics and organizing a cyber security competition in UTD's Texas Cyber Security Awareness (TexSAW) event that is annually offered to students at colleges and universities in Texas. The overall program is expected to equip the students with necessary knowledge and experiences to become successful in their future employment in cyber security domain in the Government and beyond. This project is supported by the CyberCorps® Scholarship for Service (SFS) program, which funds proposals establishing or continuing scholarship programs in cybersecurity and aligns with the U.S. National Cyber Strategy to develop a superior cybersecurity workforce. Following graduation, scholarship recipients are required to work in cybersecurity for a federal, state, local, or tribal Government organization for the same duration as their scholarship support. 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.