With a commitment to student success, CSI@MU faculty successfully mentor several doctoral, master’s and post-doctoral students. Prior students have joined cybersecurity careers in industry and academia, and have published in highly selective cybersecurity journals. Cybersecurity Center faculty lead a Scholarship for Service (SFS) project titled “MASTER: Missouri Advanced Security Training, Education and Research” sponsored by National Science Foundation that funds MS and PhD students specialized in cybersecurity. The scholarship recipients go on to serve at a federal agency or national lab upon their graduation.

Cybersecurity Center faculty mentor student teams that have competed and won multiple cyber challenges at the state and national levels in collaboration with members of the Mizzou Computing Association (MCA). A student group finished in the top 2% in a MITRE organized cyber challenge competition in 2019.  Another student group came 2nd place in the SEC Academic Conference cyber challenge sponsored by Equifax in 2018.  Additional student engagement activities on cybersecurity are being organized by working with MU Central IT Group, MCA and the Information Technology Program at MU to attract students to engage in future student-led cyber challenge training and competing activities.

Cybersecurity Center faculty recently organized the NSF-funded workshop, Midwest Verification Day(s), at the University of Missouri, Columbia.  Midwest Verification Day(s), is a workshop for the Midwest region focusing on hardware and software verification.  The workshop provides a forum for students and early  career researchers to present early stages of their research in an informal setting enabling exchange of ideas. The workshop aims to encourage collaboration and strengthen the formal methods and verification community in the Midwest region.

Cybersecurity Center faculty are involved in the US Department of Energy’s Industrial Assessment Center (IAC)  project  to  “Assist  Small  and  Medium-sized  Enterprises  to  increase their  Energy  Efficiency,  Cyber  Security  and  Competitiveness”.   As  part  of  the  IAC  activities,  workshops  are  organized  on  the topic of “Cybersecurity in the Manufacturing Enterprise” to train students and  industry  partners  (e.g.,  utility  companies,  manufacturing  companies) regarding cyber security best practices, risk assessment and technology solutions for cyber defense.

Cybersecurity Center faculty organize and serve as mentors for  the Summers@Mizzou ‘Network  Forensics  for  HackerTrackers’ camp, at the University of Missouri, Columbia for the last several years. This camp focuses on teaching high school students principles of cybersecurity, and provides them with hands-on experience in working with cloud computing and network forensics. The students complete the camp with a group project to learn and apply cyber defense research concepts through a rigorous exchange of ideas and collaborative work. The camp aims to influence high school students to choose studies in computer science and get excited about pursuing a cyber security profession to increase the pipeline of high school students pursuing related careers in the Midwest region.