2/2/2009 4:46:00 AM ITI Staff
Written by ITI Staff
The Information Trust Institute (ITI) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign will offer its Summer Undergraduate Intern Program again in 2009 following the success of the program in previous years. Once again, promising undergraduate students from around the world will be paired with ITI faculty members who are doing research on information trust topics (including security, reliability, safety, privacy, survivability, and correctness) that are relevant to the students' interests.
The 2007 and 2008 offerings of the program were received with great enthusiasm by both the faculty and students. Several students reported that their internships had encouraged them to pursue graduate studies, particularly at Illinois, even if they had not previously considered it. As 2008 participating student Pooja Agarwal put it, "I was exposed to completely new things that I have never worked on. It has completely changed my outlook towards my future life. I surely want to go to graduate school to collaborate in research." Her fellow 2008 intern, Suman Paul, added, "To me it was more than an internship. This has been one of the most memorable experiences of my academic career. "
Faculty members also appreciated the program, since it not only provided direct support for their research efforts through the students' work, but also allowed them to build relationships with outstanding undergraduates, possibly leading to graduate work or other collaborations.
In 2008, 19 students from around the U.S. and as far away as Serbia, Singapore, and India participated in the program, after being selected from among 94 applicants. Faculty from the Illinois departments of Computer Science, Electrical & Computer Engineering, Aerospace Engineering, Mechanical Science & Engineering, and Civil & Environmental Engineering, as well as the National Center for Supercomputing Applications and the Coordinated Science Laboratory, participated as mentors. In 2009, the program is being headed by Dr. Masooda Bashir, ITI's Assistant Director for Social Trust Initiatives.
The internships, which are supported by state and federal funds, include stipends and, in some cases, an allocation for travel expenses. Interns participate in 8- to 10-week research projects on the Illinois campus and attend weekly events at which professors present talks on various relevant topics, such as research ethics and overviews of research work ongoing at Illinois. Interested undergraduate students in their second or third year at any university can apply for the program by following directions on the ITI web site (www.iti.illinois.edu/2009interns).
About the Information Trust Institute (ITI)
The Information Trust Institute is a multidisciplinary cross-campus research unit housed in the College of Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It is an international leader combining research and education with industrial outreach in trustworthy and secure information systems. ITI is home to six research centers along with its Center for Information Assurance Education. ITI brings together over 90 faculty, many senior and graduate student researchers, and industry partners to conduct foundational and applied research to enable the creation of critical applications and cyber infrastructures. In doing so, ITI is creating computer systems, software, and networks that society can depend on to be trustworthy, that is, secure, dependable (reliable and available), correct, safe, private, and survivable. Instead of concentrating on narrow and focused technical solutions, ITI aims to create a new paradigm for designing trustworthy systems from the ground up and validating systems that are intended to be trustworthy. www.iti.illinois.edu
Writer: Jenny Applequist, Information Trust Institute, 217/244-8920, applequi AT iti.uiuc.edu.
Released February 2, 2009
A printable PDF version of this press release is available.