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The University of Alabama at Birmingham is one of nine universities chosen by The MITRE Corporation to serve on the Academic Affiliates Council, formed to support the company’s operation of the nation’s first federally funded research and development center (FFRDC) solely dedicated to enhancing cybersecurity and protecting national information systems.
Through a competitive process, the U.S. Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) selected MITRE to operate the FFRDC. The FFRDC will support the National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE), which was established in 2012 by NIST, the state of Maryland, and Montgomery County, Md., to help businesses secure their data and digital infrastructure by bringing together information security experts from industry, government and academia. Read more in NIST’s news release.
To execute the goals of the newly established FFRDC, MITRE is partnering with the University System of Maryland (USM) and collaborating with other universities, nonprofits and organizations that advocate and perform cybersecurity research to ensure a broad perspective and the best expertise available. UAB is among other elite universities involved in the new council, including George Mason University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Purdue University, University of California, Berkeley, University of Delaware, University of Illinois, University of Texas at Dallas and University of Texas at San Antonio.
“UAB’s Center for Information Assurance and Joint Forensics Research (CIA|JFR) has been at the forefront of cybersecurity research for several years,” said Robert E. Palazzo, Ph.D., dean of the UAB College of Arts and Sciences. “We are honored to be selected as participants in the council alongside several other leading institutions across the country with prominence in this important area of research. Our faculty and staff’s accomplishments, along with our experience with public-private collaborations, position us to make significant contributions to this innovative project in the near future.”
| “Because a core priority of the Center for Information Assurance and Joint Forensics Research is to research and develop tools that strengthen defenses against potential attacks on information, this endeavor is perfectly aligned with our efforts. We’re grateful for the opportunity to collaborate with like-minded colleagues to help translate our work into real-world results.” |
“Because a core priority of the Center for Information Assurance and Joint Forensics Research is to research and develop tools that strengthen defenses against potential attacks on information, this endeavor is perfectly aligned with our efforts,” said John Sloan, Ph.D., and director of the UAB CIA|JFR. “We’re grateful for the opportunity to collaborate with like-minded colleagues to help translate our work into real-world results.”
The new FFRDC will help to further the NCCoE’s goal to accelerate the adoption of secure technologies through public-private collaborations that identify and address today’s most pressing cybersecurity challenges.
“UAB has worked diligently to get ahead of the curve in cybercrime research,” said Richard B. Marchase, Ph.D., UAB vice president for Research and Economic Development. “Being selected to serve on this council is a testament to that hard work and the extraordinary expertise of our faculty. This collaboration will allow our faculty, staff and students to further leverage our research to help combat emerging and enduring threats to information security.”