Renewal: Preparing Crosscutting Cybersecurity Scholars

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Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) will build on its previous successful participation in the CyberCorps(R) Scholarship for Service (SFS) program to prepare additional highly qualified cybersecurity professionals to fill the talent gap in the government workforce. Among them will be 21 exceptional students who will graduate with a double degree: a BS degree in computer science, computing security, or software engineering, along with an accelerated MS degree in computing security. Reflecting RIT's new status as a National Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense Research and a doctoral-granting institution under the Carnegie Classification, an additional three doctoral scholars will graduate from the RIT's nationally ranked Ph.D. program in computing and contribute to the future demands of the nation's cybersecurity workforce. All of these 24 graduate students will be prepared to take on leadership roles with the OPM-approved employers upon graduation, and serve to secure, protect, and improve the nation's cyberinfrastructure. With their crosscutting breadth of knowledge and experiences, these advanced SFS graduates will be ready to adapt dynamically to ongoing cybersecurity challenges at various federal executive agencies. The SFS program will be housed in RIT's B. Thomas Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences, one of the largest computing colleges in the nation. The faculty mentors and the SFS scholars come from three computing departments within the college: computer science, software engineering, and computing security. As each department focuses on different aspects of cybersecurity, the scholars will benefit from the cohort experiences providing breadth and depth of cybersecurity knowledge and experiences. The SFS program at RIT thus will continue to produce cutting-edge scholars with leadership experiences in cybersecurity, and the abilities to advance the cybersecurity field. Scholarly contributions made by the SFS scholars and their mentors will be disseminated at cybersecurity conferences. As part of their outreach efforts in cybersecurity, the SFS scholars will also work with local schools with a large population of underrepresented groups in computing and cybersecurity. The scholars will also help to broaden female participation in cybersecurity by partnering with the college's active Women in Computing group, as well as partnering with the annual Women in Cybersecurity and the Grace Hopper Celebration conferences.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.