This award sponsors undergraduate and graduate student attendance at the 26th ACSAC, to be held December 6-10 2010 in Austin Texas. The ACSAC conference is a top-tier academic security conference which attracts about 200 highly skilled security professional attendees per year. ACSAC regularly brings together leading minds in academic, governmental and commercial computer security to address the most pressing problems in applied computer security and to discuss seminal works in Computer Security. In addition to keynote Invited Essays and Distinguished Practitioner talks), ACSAC includes a "Classic Papers" series, in which two or three authors of seminal papers in computer security are invited to update those papers and present lessons learned. These papers, available free on the ACSAC web site, familiarize a new generation of students with key security research developments of the past, and provide a valuable resource for undergraduate and graduate instruction. Supported students have an opportunity to meet and interact with notable figures at the conference.
The 26th Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC) was held Dec 6-10 in Austin Texas. Over 270 attendees from 20 countries attended five days of tutorials, workshops, panels, keynote speeches, and refereed papers. Among the 270 attendees were over 50 students. ACSAC is a highly selective security conference. Of over 250 papers submitted, fewer than 40 were accepted for inclusion in the conference and publication in the proceedings. A new feature this year was a career fair at which students were provided opportunities to discuss employment with government and industry participants. NSF funding allowed ACSAC to provide sponsorship (registration fees and partial travel support) to US students whose home institutions were unable to provide funding, representing Texas A&M, North Carolina State, Penn State, Carnegie Mellon, Indiana University, College of Wiliam and Mary, and Idaho State. ACSAC also provided funding from general registration fees for non-US students; in total, 18 students (13 US, plus students from Canada, India, and China) received financial support to participate in the conference. An additional 30 students received discounted registration fees, paid by ACSAC from general regisration fees. The winner of this year's Best Student Paper award, who attends University of California Santa Barbara, also received travel support from ACSAC, as well as an honoraria. This year, the Best Paper award was awarded to a student from Columbia University, who received an honoraria from ACSAC. In short, students are an integral part of the ACSAC community. They are encouraged to interact with speakers and experienced government and industry experts through sessions, luncheons, and receptions. ACSAC appreciates NSF support in allowing us to expand our historical support for student participation in the conference.
