NYU to Award Scholarships to World’s Best Young Hackers, Protectors, and Information Security Researchers

On the eve of the opening of the world’s largest student-led cybersecurity games, New York University’s information security research center announced it will award doctoral scholarships and fellowships to the NYU Tandon School of Engineering to winners who prevail against student hackers and researchers across three continents.

The new awards complement more than $1 million in scholarships previously announced for high school students who will prove their mettle alongside undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral students at the NYU Cyber Security Awareness Week (CSAW) finals November 10-12, 2016.

For the first time in the 13-year history of CSAW, the final round of contests will expand beyond NYU Tandon in Downtown Brooklyn to regional hubs at NYU Abu Dhabi — for finalists from North Africa and the Middle East — and the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur — where finalists from across India will compete.

To qualify for the final rounds this week, students bested more than 10,000 competitors worldwide in remote preliminary challenges.

“We were gratified by the enthusiastic response and high participation in the inaugural international CSAW, and we know these contests will prove to be effective in engaging and educating students throughout the world in this vital field,” said Ramesh Karri, NYU Tandon professor of electrical engineering and co-founder of the NYU Center for Cyber Security.

“We expect to face a shortfall of 1.5 million cybersecurity experts by 2020,” Karri said, citing a widely quoted Frost and Sullivan forecast. “But even that startling number may understate the scope of what we face in trying to protect our personal security, business, critical infrastructure, and national defense. It may prove extraordinarily difficult to find highly educated, brilliant researchers whose far-sighted work can change the security game. That was a major reason that the NYU Center for Cyber Security decided to offer scholarships to CSAW winners – among the best young cybersecurity minds in the world.  We want to open opportunities for them disrupt the future through doctoral studies and beyond.”

For those who qualify for admission to NYU Tandon’s highly competitive doctoral programs, scholarships will include full tuition and fellowships. Recipients must win first place at any of the three regional hubs in three contests: the signature software hacking competition, Capture the Flag (CTF); the hardware hacking and protection challenge called the Embedded Security Challenge; and the prestigious best-paper contest called the Applied Research Challenge, which evaluates research that was already peer reviewed for presentation at scholarly conferences and journals.

The scholarship winners will be offered the possibility of joint advisement by faculty at IIT Kanpur, one the premier institutes in India for engineering education and research. It recently started a center for cybersecurity for critical infrastructure.

“IIT Kanpur played a pioneering role in computer science education in India several decades ago, and hopes to play similar pioneering role in cybersecurity education, research, and awareness in the coming years,” said Manindra Agrawal, the N. Rama Rao Professor in the IIT Kanpur’s Department of Computer Science and Engineering. “We are delighted to join hands with the New York University Tandon School of Engineering to bring the cyber security awareness competitions to India, and to work together to educate the next generation of scholars in this important area.”

NYU Tandon is an internationally recognized center for cybersecurity research and education. It has received all three Center of Excellence designations from the National Security Agency and the United States Cyber Command.  It joined with the School of Law and other NYU schools to form the NYU Center for Cybersecurity (CCS). This interdisciplinary consortium explores new approaches to security and privacy by reaching beyond technology in its research and education, as well as in outreach to shape the public discourse on policy, legal, and technological issues of cybersecurity.

Other CSAW prizes will include:

• All finalists – from nearly 90 teams worldwide – will be considered on a case-by-case basis for admission to NYU Tandon master’s degree programs with partial tuition and fellowship.
• Cash prizes will be awarded for all first, second, and third-place collegiate teams.
• Over $1 million in scholarships will be offered to all finalists and winners of the CSAW High School Forensics (HSF) Challenge at NYU Tandon. Scholarships are contingent on admission to NYU Tandon and satisfactory academic progress.
• New this year, NYU Tandon will award each HSF finalist school a cash prize. 

The HSF awards at NYU Tandon are supported by a grant from the U.S. National Security Agency.

For more information on CSAW, visit csaw.engineering.nyu.edu. Follow @CSAW_NYUTandon.

Sponsors for CSAW 2016 are: Gold Level — Palo Alto Networks, Trend Micro, and U.S. Department of Homeland Security; Silver Level — Bridgewater, Google, IBM, and Kroll; Bronze Level — Bank of America, Facebook, Jefferies, Navy Civilian Careers, NCC Group, Raytheon, Two Sigma; Supporting Level — Bloomberg, Cubic, EY, Intel, National Security Agency, Optiv, The Ruth & Jerome A. Siegel Foundation, Sandia National Laboratories, and U.S. Secret Service; Contributing Level — ACSA, Altera, Carnegie Mellon University and Cigital.

About the NYU Center for Cyber Security
The NYU Center for Cybersecurity (CCS) is an interdisciplinary research institute dedicated to training the current and future generations of cybersecurity professionals and to shaping the public discourse and policy, legal, and technological landscape on issues of cybersecurity. NYU CCS is collaboration between NYU School of Law, NYU Tandon School of Engineering, and other NYU schools and departments. For more information, visit cyber.nyu.edu.

About the NYU Tandon School of Engineering
The NYU Tandon School of Engineering dates to 1854, when the New York University School of Civil Engineering and Architecture as well as the Brooklyn Collegiate and Polytechnic Institute (widely known as Brooklyn Poly) were founded. Their successor institutions merged in January 2014 to create a comprehensive school of education and research in engineering and applied sciences, rooted in a tradition of invention, and entrepreneurship and dedicated to furthering technology in service to society. In addition to its main location in Brooklyn, NYU Tandon collaborates with other schools within the country’s largest private research university and is closely connected to engineering programs in NYU Abu Dhabi and NYU Shanghai. It operates business incubators in downtown Manhattan and Brooklyn and an award-winning online graduate program. For more information, visit engineering.nyu.edu.

About IIT Kanpur
Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, is one of the premier institutions set up by the Government of India. Registered in 1959, the institute was assisted by nine leading institutions of U.S.A in the setting up of its academic programs and laboratories during the period 1962-72. With its record of path-breaking innovations and cutting edge research, the institute is known the world over as a learning centre of repute in engineering, science and several inter-disciplinary areas. In addition to formal undergraduate and postgraduate courses, the institute has been active in research and development in areas of value to both industry and government. For more information, visit www.iitk.ac.in.

About NYU Abu Dhabi
NYU Abu Dhabi consists of a highly selective liberal arts and science college (including engineering), and a world center for advanced research and scholarship — all fully integrated with each other and connected to NYU in New York. Together, NYU New York, NYU Abu Dhabi, and NYU Shanghai form the backbone of a unique global network university, with faculty and students from each campus spending "semesters away" at one or more of the numerous study-abroad sites NYU maintains on six continents. For more information, visit nyuad.nyu.edu/en.