This project seeks to establish a new CyberCorps®: Scholarship for Service (SFS) program at the Missouri University of Science and Technology (S&T) to prepare highly-qualified Cybersecurity professionals for entry into the government workforce. The proposed CyberCorps®: SFS program is called Missouri Advanced Security Training, Education and Research (MASTER). Missouri S&T has been the first institution in the state of Missouri to be designated as a National Center of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance Education as well as a National Center of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance Research. The project will produce 20 MS and PhD graduates in the field of cybersecurity to serve the nation. It will increase the number of minorities and women in cybersecurity professionals and workforce. It will provide outreach and disseminate research findings to broader communities including high schools, community colleges, HBCU partner universities, and academic communities in the field of cybersecurity. Such awareness will be generated through workshops and summer camps organized by the MASTER project team, as well as research publications and presentations in the academic and professional venues.
The proposed MASTER project will offer experiential learning by participating in the university's strategic plan themed Smart Computing and Smart Living, in which Cybersecurity plays a major integral role. Currently, the Computer Science Department building is being instrumented to act as a smart environment that can track and predict activities, occupancy, surveillance monitoring, energy usage, and so on. SFS students will design and operate security monitoring software and tools. Furthermore, a new course "Experiential Entrepreneurship for Computer Scientists" will be offered to provide the Missouri S&T CyberCorps® scholars a first-hand experience with real information-security tools applied to real-world scenarios. The Cybersecurity curriculum has been certified for National Standards 4011 (INFOSEC) and 4014E (ISSO). It includes a wide range of courses on security, privacy, trustworthiness and reliability issues. This project will also develop several new courses such as Big Data Security or Security and Privacy in Social Networks which are current research topics of the faculty team.
