Towards Models for Cybersecurity Summer Research Institutes for Undergraduate Engagement and Education
Eman M. Hammad, James K. Nelson · 2024
The U.S. faces ongoing and increasingly sophisticated malicious cyber campaigns that threaten the public and private sectors and, ultimately, the Nation's privacy and security.To help address these challenges, the Cross-Border Threat Screening and Supply Chain Defense (CBTS) Center of Excellence (COE) partnered with the Texas A&M University System RELLIS Academic Alliance and Texas A&M University-Commerce to establish a "Summer Research Institute" in the discipline of cybersecurity.This paper describes and details the inaugural edition of this annual program that aims to help build a future homeland security science and engineering workforce by engaging undergraduate students on research projects encompassing prevention, detection, assessment, and remediation of cyber incidents.In its first year, the CBTS Summer Research Institute innovatively created internship positions and selectively sponsored a team of eight undergraduate students who worked closely with two faculty subject matter experts in cybersecurity for ten weeks during the summer.The goal was to combine technical research and hands-on implementation with invited guest lectures and field trips with industry and DHS officials.This paper describes the opportunities and challenges and expands on lessons learned for improved program structures in future iterations of the institute