Carnegie Mellon University awarded $5M renewal of National Science Foundation CyberCorps Scholarship for Service program

Carnegie Mellon University was recently awarded a $5 million renewal of its National Science Foundation CyberCorps Scholarship for Service (SFS) program through 2023.

The program provides students with a full-tuition scholarship and a stipend for living expenses in exchange for government service in a cybersecurity position following graduation. The program is led by principal investigator Dena Haritos Tsamitis, the Barbara Lazarus Professor in Information Networking and director of the Information Networking Institute (INI).

“Carnegie Mellon is a leader in cybersecurity education and research, and this funding enables the university to leverage its unmatched capabilities and capacity to strengthen the federal corps of cybersecurity personnel,” Haritos Tsamitis said. “Our programs attract, educate and develop cybersecurity experts well-positioned to defend our nation and tackle the challenges faced by government agencies.”

Since 2001, the university has received approximately $25.8 million and graduated 210 students through the program who have gone on to work for the CIA, FBI, NSA and other federal, state and local government organizations.

The recent $5 million award will fund between five and seven graduate students annually who are studying information security at Carnegie Mellon.

“The SFS program in the College of Engineering’s INI has been crucial in fostering the next generation of cybersecurity experts, enabling them with the state-of-the-art skills required to serve our nation,” James H. Garrett, dean of CMU’s College of Engineering, said. Garrett was recently named university provost, effective Jan. 1, 2019.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, jobs in information security are expected to grow at a rate four times higher than the average job growth over the next eight years.