A 12-Month Graduate Research Assistant (GRA) is sought for 2015-2016 to work on a DoD-funded cybersecurity education project at UMBC.

Position Highlights

• 9-month stipend: $18,752.94; 2.5 month summer stipend: $8,000.
• Hours: 20 hours/week (September 2015-May 2016)
• Benefits: tuition and mandatory fees, health insurance
• Eligibility: MS or PhD student at UMBC in CS, CE, EE, or related field (IS, math, education, physics).
• INS Requirements: USA citizen or permanent resident
• Source of funding: Department of Defense via a grant under BAA-003-15 (PI Alan Sherman)

Skills Needed

The GRA will (1) transcribe and analyze interviews of students to uncover their misconceptions about cybersecurity, (2) suggest interview prompts and test questions, and (3) help prepare publications describing the results. This work will include some statistical analysis and use of SurveyMonkey on-line questionnaires.

The GRA should bring knowledge and passion for cybersecurity, excellent communication skills, a strong work ethic, and a willingness, ability, and eagerness to learn whatever is needed to complete the project successfully.

The GRA will work closely with the investigators, including Drs. Alan Sherman, Dhananjay Phatak, Linda Oliva, Geoffrey Herman, and a post-doc in engineering education to be hired at The University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana.

Project Summary

Professors Alan Sherman (CSEE), Dhananjay Phatak (CSEE), and Linda Oliva (Education) have been awarded a research grant from the Department of Defense to create two educational cybersecurity assessment tools, to help improve the way cybersecurity is taught. The $294,016 one-year project is joint with Geoffrey Herman at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana (UMBC portion $146,917). The research is being carried out at the UMBC Cyber Defense Lab at the UMBC Center for Information Security and Assurance and will fund a 12-month GRA in 2015-2016.

This project is creating infrastructure for a rigorous evidence-based improvement of cybersecurity education by developing the first Cybersecurity Assessment Tools (CATs) targeted at measuring the quality of instruction. The first CAT will be a Cybersecurity Concept Inventory (CCI) that measures how well students understand basic concepts in cybersecurity after a first course in the field. The second CAT will be a Cybersecurity Curriculum Assessment (CCA) that measures how well curricula prepared students graduating from college on fundamentals needed for careers in cybersecurity. Each CAT will be a multiple-choice test with approximately thirty questions.

Inspired by the highly influential Force Concept Inventory from physics, the investigators are following a three-step process: In fall 2015, with MS student Geet Parekh, they carried out two Delphi processes to identify important and difficult concepts in cybersecurity. Next, they will interview students to uncover their misconceptions about these concepts. Finally, they will draft and psychometrically evaluate questions whose incorrect answers are driven by the uncovered misconceptions. For more information, see here and here.

In 2015-2016, the project will focus on (1) interviewing students and analyzing the results, and (2) developing draft questions.

How to Apply

Interested graduate students should email Dr. Sherman (Sorry, you need javascript to view this email address. ) a resume, unofficial transcript, and statement of interest and qualifications. Include “CATs GRA” in subject header.

The Shriver Center coordinates this undergraduate scholarship program, funded by the France-Merrick Foundation. Now in it’s 20th year, this scholarship is available for students who demonstrate an exemplary commitment to service, leadership, and civic engagement on the UMBC campus and in Baltimore City.   The France-Merrick Scholarship Program seeks to combine service and reflection, build relationships, and strengthen networks to affect meaningful change.

Fellows are awarded a scholarship that goes towards tuition, mandatory fees, and room and board expenses.  This will not exceed $15,000 for Maryland students, $22,000 for out-of-state students.  In 2015-16, Fellows will engage in service connected with Baltimore City;  serve in leadership roles (which includes convening meetings for the France-Merrick Scholarship Program), support meaningful professional development, and serve as ambassadors of service at UMBC.  For 2015-16, two Fellows will be selected.

Scholars are awarded a scholarship of up to $1,500.  In 2015-16, Scholars will engage in service connected with Baltimore City, support meaningful professional development, participate in meetings, and serve as ambassadors of service at UMBC.   For 2015-16, five Scholars will be selected.

Applications for the 2015-16 cohort are NOW available on-line, and will close on Monday, August 24, 2015, at 5 pm.  Awardees will be notified in early September.

For more information, please visit The Shriver Center's website at:

Rick Forno, Graduate Program Director for Cybersecurity and Assistant Director of UMBC's Center for Cybersecurity spoke with the Baltimore Sun and Technical.ly Baltimore recently about hacktivism in the Baltimore riots and a recent ZeroFox report that analyzed social media to identify prominent activists, potential threats, and/or agitators during the riots.

ZeroFOX under fire for social media ‘Threat Actors’ report during Baltimore riots (8/5/2015)

City faced cyberattacks amid chaos and unrest on the streets (7/31/2015)

"The biggest realization that came to me during Rebuilding Manhood was the fact that I am not alone! I cannot say that I've ever fit the definition of what society has always told me what a man should look, act, or talk like... so being with other men who recognized that this is a prevalent issue in not only their lives but other men as well was so comforting and eye opening."

- Bentley Corbett-Wilson, Rebuilding Manhood Spring 2014 Cohort

For more information, visit our Q&A page. 

Apply to Rebuilding Manhood this fall by submitting your application of interest by September 6th (deadline extended)
We accept students on a rolling basis so don't wait to submit your application.

Rebuilding Manhood takes place on Fridays from 2-3:15pm starting on September 11th and ending on December 4th. 

UMBC faculty and staff are encouraged to nominate students by filling out this nomination form by no later than Friday, August 28th.

 

An article on CNN, Why women in tech came to a 'Halt', uses AMC Halt and Catch Fire television series to illustrate some of challenges in keeping more women in computing majors and careers.

The article mentions the UMBC CWIT Bits and Bytes program as one example of an effort to address this.

"Even with the number of computer science jobs increasing, the number of women pursuing careers in computer science is falling," said Jennifer Koebele, a writer who specializes in research on higher education and technology. … I found that according to Stanford University studies, women's quit rate in technology exceeds that of other science and engineering fields — with a full 56 percent leaving their organizations at midlevel points in their careers," Koebele said.

She points out that there are major efforts to try to bring these numbers up to the levels of decades ago. Programs such as Bits and Bytes, which brings a couple of dozen female high school students to the campus of University of Maryland, Baltimore County, each year to shadow women in computer science programs. At the same time, colleges are making a concerted effort to target girls in middle and high school, sparking interest in math and science.

A blog reflection written by Women’s Center intern Bree Best

For the past several months I have been trying to conceptualize what I wanted to say about white privilege and protesting, the struggle of identifying power structures, access to privileged dissent, and a whole litany of other things that I could go on about dealing with Racism = Prejudice + Power. One recent experience sticks out in my mind as indicative of just how harmful white privilege can be in spaces that are supposed to be about social justice.

Thirty-five of the 46 women who have publicly accused Bill Cosby of sexual assault are featured on the cover of New York Magazine.

At the end of March 2015, I went to protest Bill Cosby at the Lyric in Baltimore and immediately I noticed the appalling disparity between white women to women of color. As I looked for the protest organizer to discuss my concerns, I heard the protesters shame the patrons as they were walking into the Lyric – patrons who were overwhelmingly people of color. I came to protest Bill Cosby’s rape allegations and bring awareness to sexual assault, not to further marginalize already marginalized people.

When I expressed my concerns to the white woman protest leader, her response was immediately defensive: “We’re supposed to shame the patrons. They’re the ones that paid for the tickets to come see this show. That’s how a protest works.” I tried explaining my discomfort as a woman of color seeing mostly white women protesting a black man by yelling at people of color and mentioned that many of these same people being yelled at may have experienced white people yelling at them while protesting for Civil Rights, so perhaps a different strategy would be worth considering.

Peak white feminism at a Slut Walk NYC march in 2011. Using racism to combat sexism = FAIL.

Ultimately, I ended up leaving the protest after the organizer told me that I was being combative (among other unsavory things). As I drowned my intersectional feminist rage in Blue Moon and mixed drinks, I considered how much more effective the protest could have been if the white organizer and participants had used an intersectional lens to think about how systems of power influence their lives, including their approach to activism. We need more critical dialogue not just about race and racism but specifically about whiteness, which is often forgotten in these discussions because it is the invisible norm against which everything else is othered. 

Disrupting this white-centric framework is crucial for engaging in anti-racism. On a national scale, the Black Lives Matter protests are a direct interruption of that a Eurocentric worldview. Just as we need to decenter whiteness in the physical spaces like these protests, we also need for “allies” to decenter whiteness mentally so that they can engage in social justice without reproducing oppressive power structures or erasing the voices of people of color.

I’ve been in many situations like the Cosby protest when a white person got defensive when I pointed out a racial disparity or racially motivated power dynamics and I tried to push them to understand how problematic that can be, at which point they would either leave or ask me to leave by insinuating that I was being “difficult to work with.” These racial interactions are an everyday occurrence for me because I and many other black people must continually navigate “white space” while also decentering whiteness. However, in order to effectively dismantle white supremacy, black people cannot be the only ones working to disrupt white space – in our communities and our minds – but rather white people must also take on the often-uncomfortable challenge of confronting their own privilege.

Most places can be considered spaces of privilege and prejudice unless they actively work against oppression.

With white spaces being virtually everywhere, my beloved Women’s Center at UMBC is no different. Throughout my internship I’ve had many conversations with Women’s Center staff about we can continue working to decenter whiteness, including more intentionally focusing on the voices and perspectives of women of color and developing strategies to more effectively enable white people to engage in constructive dialogue around race and racism. Dismantling white supremacy is a daunting task and I am equipped with the skills and opportunities to aid in this endeavor despite how exhausting this work can be.

As with most social change work, progress in anti-racist work takes time, a humbled nature, and patience. People make mistakes and call each other out. If that is the case, use the white leadership from the Cosby protest as an example of how not to react. Instead I would suggest: Take a breath, assess your privilege, welcome the lesson, and ask engaging questions that focus on creating an effective impact in communities of color. If people want to build diverse communities, then we as a community have to acknowledge and embrace our differences through understanding the greater systems at large that privileges few and oppresses many.

CSEE professor Curtis Menyuk was recently awarded the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Research Award. This award is a significant honor, and comes with 60,000 euros in funding to support research in with German research collaborators.

The Humbolt Research Award award is given to recognize the lifetime research achievments of academics "whose fundamental discoveries, new theories, or insights have had a significant impact on their own discipline and who are expected to continue producing cutting-edge achievements in the future."

Dr. Menyuk's research is in the field of nonlinear optics and its applications.  His expertise is in theoretical and computational modeling, although much of his work has been in collaboration with experimental groups.  One major reearch achievement is the development of the basic equations that govern light propagation in optical fibers in the presence of nonlinearity, birefringence, and chromatic dispersion.  These equations are the basis for the physical layer modeling of optical fiber communication systems and are used extensively in the telecommunications and photonics industry. 

A second achievment is the development of models for determining the stability and noise response of modelocked lasers and other resonators.  This work is ongoing, but has already had a significant on the design of short-pulse lasers and other resonators.  

A third body of work has been fundamental studies of nonlinear processes in gases and optical fibers.  This theoretical work led to scientifically important experimental work and may lead to new methods for high-energy pulse generation and time transfer in optical fibers.

Dr. Menyuk has authored or co-authored more than 250 archival journal publications, edited three books and he is a co-inventor of six patents.  He is a fellow of the American Physical Society, the Optical Society of America, and the IEEE. He is a former UMBC Presidential Research Professor.

Here is what Dr. Menyuk has to say about winning the award:

“I was pleased and honored to receive the Humboldt Research Award, which is one of the world's most prestigious academic awards. Most Nobel prize winners in my field and many members of the national academies have won this award. I have been at UMBC for 30 years, and this award is really a recognition of the collective efforts of my research group and colleagues here at UMBC. I am grateful for Dr. Philip Russell of the Max Planck Institute for Light for nominating me and — what is even more important — for giving my research group at UMBC the opportunity to collaborate with one of the world's great research institutes.”

This is the second major international award Dr. Menyuk has won in the past two years. In 2013, Dr. Menyuk was awarded the IEEE Photonics Society Streifer Award.