Graduate students pursuing careers related to cybersecurity, including specialties in computer science, engineering, law, public policy, economics and social sciences, are being encouraged to apply for Cyber Security Technology, Policy, Law and Planning for an Uncertain Future, a weeklong summer institute at Sandia National Laboratories in Livermore, Calif. The program will take place Aug. 5-10 and is open to U.S. citizens and foreign nationals.

Twenty students will be selected. The application deadline has been extended to March 12 (seehttp://www.sandia.gov/summer_institute for details and the online application.)

Participating students will collaborate in small teams, working side by side with leading national experts in the technical, policy and legal cybersecurity arenas.

“The federal government needs to have a hiring pool of cybersecurity professionals to draw upon,” said Susanna Gordon, manager of computer sciences and information systems at Sandia’s California site. “They need to be threat-informed and they need to have the skills and tools that can wipe out classes of vulnerabilities, as opposed to today’s model, which is very much a ‘find a vulnerability, fix a vulnerability’ model. Institutes like this one are designed to help prepare that next generation of cybersecurity practitioners, including not only deep technical expertise, but also the policy and legal aspects that are so often critical in making real progress.”

Gordon said she hopes the experience will help persuade participating students to consider Sandia as a future place of full-time employment. “We also hope they will spread the word back at their home institutions of the importance of the work we do at Sandia and the high quality of our staff and facilities,” she said.

Students will select from the following technical focus areas:

• Assured Sharing: Post-WikiLeaks Era Tensions in National-Security Information Sharing and Safeguarding
• Information Analytics for Cyber Security
• Public-Private Sector Responsibilities and Legal Issues in Our Nation’s Cyber Defense
• Trusted Digital systems Designed with Field-Programmable Gate Arrays

Students will participate in a strategic-planning exercise to discuss technical advances and capabilities that should be pursued to strengthen U.S. defenses against cyberattacks.

Institute participants will be provided housing at a Livermore suites hotel located near Sandia. Transportation and meals also will be provided.