The University of Texas at Dallas has identified the development of research and education programs to “make the nation secure” as one of its six strategic goals. In conjunction with the University’s initiative, the Computer Science Department at the University made significant investment in developing the research and education infrastructures for cyber security and information assurance. These include establishing multiple faculty lines as well as initiating efforts to become the NSA/DHS Centers of Excellence in both Information Assurance Education as well as Research. Over the past nine years we have established strong research and education programs in cyber security. Therefore we are most honored and pleased that IBM has recognized our work in awarding us with the 2013 IBM Faculty Award for Cyber Security.

With this IBM award, we will prepare courses in critical cyber security topics such as secure cloud computing and cyber operations. What will be unique about these courses is that we will develop them jointly with IBM. This way we will have access to the vast number of cyber security tools and technologies developed by IBM and our courses will contain not only sound theoretical results but they will also have a strong practical bent. Furthermore, our courses will include both a combination of lectures and laboratory exercises where our students will experiment with the various tools and develop innovative solutions as part of the curriculum. Such an approach will better prepare our students to face the cyber security challenges and develop insightful and practical solutions based on solid foundations.

We thank IBM for giving us this highly prestigious award and look forward to our collaboration.