Collaborative Research: Colorado-Washington Security Scholars Program

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The University of Colorado at Colorado Springs (UCCS) and the University of Washington Tacoma (UWT) jointly propose to establish a new CyberCorps (R): Scholarship for Service (SFS) program called Colorado-Washington Security Scholars Program (CWSSP). CWSSP will leverage the host institutions' cybersecurity degree programs and their existing formal collaborations to provide multiple pipelines in generating highly qualified and committed professionals to join the government workforce in cybersecurity. CWSSP will provide scholarships to student scholars in the UCCS Computer Science Department and the UWT School of Engineering and Technology so that the scholars can learn the technical skills and knowledge to address the evolving and emerging cybersecurity issues. The project emphasizes teamwork and collaborations and will produce cybersecurity professionals who can investigate cybersecurity with a systems approach, combining multiple expertise domains so that they can effectively collaborate with each other in remote settings. This is a key scenario that often happens in addressing cybersecurity research problems. CWSSP, built on collaborations between institutions, will fully take advantage of its cross-campus platform to learn and practice remote collaboration skills and to provide a model scholarship/education program and a blueprint for future inter-institution education programs. The project will also engage underrepresented students in state-of-the-art cybersecurity research and provide them with leadership experiences. CWSSP will support six doctoral, eighteen master's, and twelve undergraduate students, in multiple cohorts, who will be prepared to work on cybersecurity and privacy problems across sectors to secure the national defense.CWSSP will advance cybersecurity research and education by promoting collaboration and resource sharing in cybersecurity and actively involving governmental agencies. To advance cybersecurity education, CWSSP will introduce a cross-campus curriculum and incorporate unique team-based approach to cybersecurity education and deliver effective mechanisms to incorporate teams and conferences/workshops in formal education. The CWSSP program will also have strong outreach to external organizations in cybersecurity by getting them involved in the CWSSP teams and the CWSSP conferences. By extending the collaborations outside of the host institutions, CWSSP will drive the student scholars to make connections with the cybersecurity professionals in the government sector and work/research on the cybersecurity problems which can have stronger real-world impacts in the protection of the nation's information infrastructure. The CWSSP graduates will be equipped with the cybersecurity knowledge and understanding, relevant technical skills, and teamwork and collaboration skills to help ensure their readiness to participate in the government's cybersecurity workforce.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.