Do you want to work for the federal
government and help defend our nation’s cyber space against CyberCrime and
Cyber-Terrorism?
And have your education fully paid for?
Through the Federal Cyber
Corps Scholarship for Service (SFS) program, The University of North Carolina
at Charlotte and North Carolina Agriculture and Technology State University
will provide grants to students to study in the field of information security.
Each scholarship recipient
will complete a graduate degree in either Information Technology or Computer
Science, and each student will be in the program for up to two years. Rising
juniors and seniors at UNC Charlotte are also eligible through the early entry
accelerated track for MS degrees.
All participants will be
fully integrated into our research programs and be associated with one of our
on going research projects. All students will receive stipends plus support for
tuition and fees and room and board.
All students will complete a
Graduate Certificate in Information Security and Privacy at UNC Charlotte and a
Master’s degree in either Information Technology or Computer Science at either
UNC Charlotte or NC A&T State University. There will be additional
activities that are specially created for the SFS students.
Each student in the program
will be supported for up to two years. The specific benefits will be:
·
A graduate student will be
paid a stipend of $12,000 per year.
·
Additional support funds
will be provided to cover room and board expenses (this support will be
approximately $2,400 per year, subject to funding availability).
·
Applicable tuition and fees,
including any out-of-state and graduate student fees, will be paid on behalf of
the scholarship recipients. This support is provided in addition to the
stipend. (Out of state tuitions may be offered subject to overall funding
limits).
·
Each student will be matched
to an on going research project under the direction of an IA faculty member.
The requirements for each
student in the program and the eligibility criteria are:
·
Must be a United States
citizen.
·
A full graduate time student
within two years of graduation in the Computer Science Masters program at NC
A&T State University or the Information Technology program of the
University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
·
Preferences will be given to
those students who will be in the program for at least three semesters in order
to have the necessary exposure to information security research.
·
Each student must meet
selection criteria for federal employment (final job placement may require
security clearances, so each scholarship recipient may be required to undergo
the background investigation required to obtain such clearances).
·
During the summers while
enrolled in the program, each student will be placed by the U.S. Office of
Personnel Management (OPM) into internship positions at a federal agency.
·
Upon graduation, each
student will be required to work for a federal agency. The work requirement
time period matches the supported time period. Students will be placed into
positions by the OPM.
Each applicant to the SFS
program should provide the following:
For applicants interested in
the program, please send or have sent all of the above information to:
Scholarship for Service
Computer Science department
North Carolina A&T State University
1601 E. Market Street
Greensboro, NC 27411
Or send electronically to: mailto:CompSci@ncat.edu?subject=Cyber Service Fellowship
The selection criteria are as
follows:
·
United States citizen.
·
Official acceptance in
either the NC A&T State University Computer Science Masters program or the
UNC Charlotte graduate program.
·
Expected graduation with MS
degree in either computer science within two years.
·
At least a 3.0 cumulative
GPA on a 4.0 scale.
·
Evaluation of the student’s
potential success in the Information Assurance program.
In addition, we will consider
the following criteria:
·
Commitment to participate in
summer service and service following degree completion according to the
guidelines of the SFS program.
·
Commitment to participate in
assessment activities after their scholarship and required federal service has
ended.
·
Demonstrated leadership,
participation in team activities, prior social service, and/or evidence of
creative and independent thinking and/or acting.
The most qualified students
will be selected.
A panel of IA faculty from
UNC Charlotte and NC A&T State University will review all applications and
interview likely candidates, either in person or by telephone. The selection
process will end when the panel selects the most qualified students to be
admitted on the basis of application data and the interview. During this
selection process, the students’ interests, goals, and requests will be used to
match each scholarship student with an appropriate faculty mentor. Each student
will be included in a research project during their first semester of support.
Final approval of accepted applicants must be certified by the U.S. Office of
Personnel Management.
Key components of the SFS
program, in addition to the normal classroom and laboratory experiences
contained in the graduate curricula, are:
·
Faculty with considerable
experience in working with undergraduate and graduate students in a teaching
and research environment
·
Immediate integration of
students in research programs in information assurance
·
A Cyber Research Seminar
emphasizing critical thinking, leadership, presentation, and publication
skills.
·
As a complement to hands-on
research a series of Information Security and Privacy seminars will
allow students to interact with experts in the field of information assurance
·
An internship workshop will
be held annually. Students will present their internship experiences
·
Development of professional
skills through lectures, mentoring, a training series, and experience.
·
The service aspect,
coordinated by OPM, where students will serve in a government agency during the
summers while they are enrolled in the SFS program. This service experience
will give them an opportunity to solve specific real problems in information
assurance.
·
Can I apply if I have an
Associate's degree? No,
you need to be admitted to one of the graduate programs listed in the selection
criteria.
·
Am I required to work for
two years even if I can obtain my degree faster? No. The work requirement is a one for
one match between the time you are supported and the time you are asked to
work. So if you are supported for three semesters, then you would have a work
obligation of one and a half years.
·
Can I apply for this
program if I am interested in a PhD degree in computer science? No. Only M.S. degrees are available
through this program.
·
Will it be possible to
complete the service obligation at any one of the national laboratories, such
as INEEL? No. The national
labs are all run by contractors and as such the employees at the labs are
contractor employees and not federal employees. The obligation associated with
this program is a federal employment obligation.
Access control policy management. This research is the
collaboration of several researchers and aims at developing a framework for
large/multiple enterprises to manage access control policies. The approach integrates
role-based access control, delegation, distributed trust management, PMI and
PKI.
Authentication architectures for
healthcare applications. This research
aims at the development of a robust, easy to use, scalable authentication
architecture to be used for strong authentication. Although it is targeted for
health care applications, many aspects of the architecture are generic and can
be used by other types of applications as well.
Authentication protocols for
token-based wearable devices. This research is looking at a new, patented approach to wireless-based
strong user authentication based on wearable communication devices. It enables
the development of innovative wireless applications that can protect the
privacy of users in a wireless communication environment.
Efficient algorithms for encryption and
digital signature. Representing a significant improvement over previous
works, this research has resulted a new class of algorithms and protocols that
combine encryption and digital signature into a single algorithm. It can be
applied with a variety of public-key encryption techniques and result in very
significant savings in computing time. One of the promising applications of
this patented approach is that it can be used in wireless communication with
significant saving in power consumption over traditional methods.
Information security architecture for
collaborative working environments. This
research investigates alternative security models and architectures for
collaborative working environments, including workflow and context-rich
information environments.
Modular intrusion detection. The
focus of this research seeks to create a new modular paradigm for intrusion
detection. One key characteristic is that it will be extremely scalable,
ranging from home based network to large networks spanning multiple
geographical locations.
Security for resource constrained
computing. A security extension to KVM (a micro version
of Java) for PDAs running on the Palm operating
system has been developed. Faculty and students are currently investigating new
and efficient information security techniques for the next generation of
hand-held devices.
Survivability mechanisms for mobile
networks. Perform
critical analysis of protocol behavior for both cellular and ad hoc network
architectures. The objective is to develop a realistic test bed to assess how
mobile networks can continue to operate under various attack/disaster scenarios
·
Academic program links
o
Master's of Science in Computer Science at
NC A&T State University
o
Laboratory of Information Integration,
Security and Privacy at UNC Charlotte
o
Master's of Science of Information
Technology at UNC Charlotte
o
Master's of Science in Computer Science
at UNC Charlotte
o
Graduate studies at UNC Charlotte
at UNC Charlotte
o
Download UNC
Charlotte graduate application forms
·
Links to organizations
responsible for SFS operations and to other SFS recipients
o
The
U.S. Office of Personnel Management
o
List of all
the institutions with Scholarship for Service awards
o
Critical Information Assurance
Office
·
Links to the NSF Federal
Cyber Service: Scholarship for Service program
o
The NSF Federal Cyber
Service: Scholarship for Service program
o
The Initial NSF Program
Solicitation for the Federal Cyber Service: Scholarship for Service