2012 Winners of ITI Undergraduate Scholarships Announced

The Information Trust Institute has announced the 2012 recipients of scholarships under its Illinois Cyber Security Scholars Program (ICSSP), which supports undergraduate students at Illinois who are U.S. citizens working towards careers in information trust.

l to r, the 2012 ICSSP scholarship recipients: Clayton Quinlan, Nicholas Ciaglia, Dennis McWherter, and Anthony Louie.

The 2012 winners include:

• Nicholas Ciaglia, a junior from Roselle, Illinois, majoring in Computer Science
• Anthony Louie, a junior from Oakland, California, majoring in Computer Science
• Dennis McWherter, a senior from Joliet, Illinois, majoring in Computer Science
• Clayton Quinlan, a junior from Mahomet-Seymour, Illinois, majoring in Computer Science

The winners were selected from a competitive pool of applicants following a review process designed to identify students with the greatest potential to succeed in careers related to information trust. Dr. Masooda Bashir, who is ITI's Assistant Director for Social Trust Initiatives and the program director of the ICSSP program, praised the recipients. These scholarship recipients are bright engineering students who want to specialize in cyber security, she said. This scholarship provides an excellent opportunity for these students to pursue their field of interest and contribute to the information assurance workforce.

The scholarship recipients have a broad range of technical interests and career goals, but all of them are looking forward to the benefits of participating in the ICSSP program. The ICSSP scholarship program pretty much outlined my exact goals, says Ciaglia, who is particularly interested in studying wireless and web-related security concepts. Before I heard about it, I was set on specializing in security and trying to work my way up into a cool governmental job. Now, well... not too much has changed!

ICSSP was created in 2009 with $1.25 million in funding from the Federal Cyber Service: Scholarship for Service (SFS) program of the National Science Foundation. SFS's mission is to increase the number of students entering the fields of computer security and information assurance, with the ultimate objective of improving the U.S. government's ability to protect its own information infrastructure.

Each participating student will receive a scholarship and stipend covering the last two years of undergraduate study, and in exchange will commit to work for two years following graduation as an information assurance specialist in the federal government.

Professor Roy Campbell of the Department of Computer Science and ITI at Illinois is the principal investigator of ICSSP research. ICSSP scholarships will be awarded annually, and applications will be due in the spring for scholarships beginning in the fall. Interested students can visit the ITI web site at www.iti.illinois.edu for more information.