Computer Science Department Receives Large NSF/SFS Grant

The Computer Science Department at James Madison University has been awarded a National Science Foundation "Federal Cyber Service: Scholarship for Service" grant. The grant supports several full scholarships, paying for tuition, books, and a stipend for living expenses for up to two years. Graduate and undergraduate students who are U.S. citizens and in the last two years of their studies are eligible to apply. In return, students agree to work for a government agency in Information Assurance for up to two years (one year of service for each year they receive funding). Initially, the department received a commitment for the first two years of the program in the amount of $916,714.

The Computer Science Department will be able to support three cohorts of undergraduate and graduate students in Information Security and Digital Forensics during the next four years. The funding supports the undergraduate Computer Science students who take the Information Security certification track and the graduate students who are earning a Master's degree in Computer Science with a concentration in Digital Forensics.

CS Professors Buchholz and Heydari, who are the PIs of the grant expect that the project will have an immediate impact on the Information Assurance and Computer Security capabilities of the federal workforce. The Bachelor of Science graduates will bring valuable general computing and security skills to the agencies that employ them. Graduates from the Digital Forensics concentration will be valuable assets for federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies, having obtained the skills needed to investigate complex incidents, malicious code, and attacks to the national infrastructure.

The first cohort will start in the Fall of 2012 and will consist of five graduate students and one undergraduate student.

• More information about the undergraduate scholarship
• More information about the graduate scholarship

View more information and a video of Dr. Florian Buchholz discussing the grant.