August 16, 2011: Professor Venkat Venkatakrishnan and team awarded $3.2 million NSF IGERT for "Electronic Security and Privacy: Technological, Human, Enterprise and Legal Considerations"

Principal Investigator: Venkat  Venkatakrishnan, Computer Science (Engineering)

Co-PIs:  Ranganathan Chandrasekaran, Information & Decision Sciences (Business)
             Steve Jones, Communications (LAS)
             Robert Sloan, Computer Science (Engineering)
             Annette Valenta, Biomedical and Health Information Sciences (Applied Health Sciences)

Congratulations to Venkat Venkatakrishnan  for leading this effort, the co-PIs, and the 15 UIC professors (and one Kent Law School professor) that participated in developing this proposal (see attachment for a full list of names).  The proposal involves four UIC colleges.  Our sincere thanks to Deans Nelson, Pagano, Tantillo, and Tate (and former Dean McBride) for their strong support. The proposal also received outstanding support from Vice-Chancellor Garcia and OVCR, and Interim Dean Gillette  and the Graduate College.  Thanks also to Computer Science staff members Denise Kelly, Imelda Baker, and Ivy Yuan for excellent administrative support in preparing the proposal. We thank everyone involved for both their pre-award efforts, and in advance for the post-award support they have committed to make this project successful.

This IGERT award supports the establishment of a PhD training program in all the many aspects of Electronic Security and Privacy. We all know that today individuals, corporations and governments are facing myriad threats online in the form of cyber-attacks, online fraud, viruses, worms, identity thefts, and informational losses. Technological expertise is a necessity to fight these threats, but technological solutions divorced from human, social, economic, and legal considerations are all too often ineffective.

The objective of the program is to broadly educate a new generation of PhD students from a range of disciplines so that they become the educators, researchers, and professionals who can address these electronic security and privacy problems.

Please read the UIC News Release for more info.