CyberCorps Scholarship for Service (Renewal): Securing the Future: Scholarship for Service through Excellence in Cyber Operations

About This Grant

Louisiana State University (LSU) renews its thriving CyberCorps® Scholarship-for-Service (SFS) program that supports undergraduate and graduate students in computer science. LSU’s Department of Computer Science has experienced record-breaking growth since introducing of the CyberCorps® cybersecurity program in 2017. LSU is designated by the National Security Agency as a Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Operations (CAE-CO) and offers SFS awardees a tightly integrated combination of applied cybersecurity experiences in the classroom and impactful research in state-of-the-art labs, addressing important problems in memory forensics, reverse engineering, malware analysis, Artificial Intelligence, network security, and more. LSU has established relationships with many federal and state partners to expose our students early to federal and state service. These include Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), Idaho National Labs, Department of Homeland Security, the United States Secret Service, United States Army Cyber Command, the Cyber Crime Unit of the Louisiana State Police, and the Louisiana National Guard. All LSU SFS awardees participate in a federal or state cybersecurity-related internship program and perform focused cybersecurity research under the guidance of an LSU faculty member. Students also have the opportunity to study for and obtain cybersecurity certifications, attend cybersecurity-themed conferences, and become members of the LSU Cybersecurity Club, which offers cybersecurity activities such as Capture-the-flag (CTF) competitions and bootcamps focused on deep learning. The LSU SFS program also has significant benefits for society as a whole, as it substantially increases the number of highly trained cybersecurity professionals, a critical issue in defending our nation and its infrastructure. The scholarships help the LSU continue to recruit and retain excellent undergraduate and graduate cybersecurity students and provide resources for these exceptional students to pursue cybersecurity career. This project is supported by the CyberCorps® Scholarship for Service (SFS) program in the Division of Graduate Education, which funds proposals establishing or continuing scholarship programs in cybersecurity and aligns with the U.S. National Cyber Strategy to develop a superior cybersecurity workforce. Following graduation, scholarship recipients are required to work in cybersecurity for a federal, state, local, or tribal government organization for the same duration as their scholarship support. This project is jointly funded by the CyberCorps® Scholarship for Service (SFS) program and the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR). This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.