CyberCorps Scholarship for Service (Renewal): From Cybersecurity to Assured Autonomy

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Assured autonomy is a new field that merges cybersecurity and artificial intelligence (AI), two important branches of computer science. The challenges and opportunities of assured autonomy call for curricular changes and new education paradigms. This CyberCorps® Scholarship for Service (SFS) renewal project at Johns Hopkins University (JHU) will expand to include education in this emerging field with students at JHU completing the Master of Science in Security Informatics (MSSI) degree program. They will be engaged in seminars, courses, and research projects in assured autonomy that cover essential topics of both AI for cybersecurity and security for AI. Upon graduation, they will be well-prepared to take on the responsibilities and challenges of cybersecurity-related missions in a broad range of applications. This project will be a catalyst for new curriculum and research initiatives at JHU’s Information Security Institute (ISI), Institute for Assured Autonomy (IAA), and Mathematical Institute for Data Science. Furthermore, Engineering for Professionals programs in Cybersecurity and AI, the Computer Science Department, and other departments will also be impacted. Building on a national education model within ISI/IAA, this project’s dissemination efforts have strong potential to reach a broad audience. The proposed education activities, including seminars, courses, and student projects, will facilitate adoption by peer institutions. In addition, the project’s outreach activities will engage with current historically black college or university (HBCU) partners to expand their related education and research programs.The MSSI education pedagogy is based on integrating courses, labs, research projects, and internships stemming from the various academic cultures of the several schools at JHU. This project seeks to fully integrate the MSSI program with the initiatives of JHU in areas of AI and the Internet-of-things (IoT). The integration will be accomplished through the newly established Institute for Assured Autonomy that focuses on trustworthy AI-based systems. It will incorporate training in both AI for security and security of AI into the SFS program through seminars, courses, research projects, and mentoring from world-class experts from JHU and related institutions. Real-world project-based learning will enable the continuous creation and updating of capstone projects integral to students’ programs of study and provide students with immersive learning experiences. In addition, integrating student research and learning can quickly align cybersecurity education with the new capacity and need for technology advancement, and have an impact beyond AI and assured autonomy.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.