Grants and Scholarships
Grants and Scholarships
Project Title: Project ASK: Applying Student Knowledge for Success in Cybersecurity and Data Science
PI/PD Name: Khreisat, Laila
Department/School: Department of Mathematics and Computer Science
Sponsoring Agency: National Science Foundation via a Partnership with Kean University
Project Period: 10/15/2021 – 09/30/2026
Total Award to FDU: $999,987 (Including $48,677 Indirect Costs)
Abstract
This S-STEM proposal will broaden the research of prior initiatives lead by Kean University by including the following institutions with similar student populations and an emphasis on Cybersecurity and Data Science, i.e., Fairleigh Dickinson University, Brookdale Community College, New Jersey Institute of Technology and Union County Community College. The project will continue to innovate and share the recruiting and advising methods and lessons learned during prior S-STEM awards, particularly the importance of faculty advising, building a cohort community, and supporting professional development. Best practices of the Computing Alliance for Hispanic Serving Institutions (CAHSI), an NSF INCLUDES Alliance, will be used for responding to the national need for cybersecurity and data science professionals, building a regional community of expertise and opportunity.
PI/PD Name: Khreisat, Laila
Department/School: Department of Mathematics and Computer Science
Project Title: Network-wide Verification on IPv6 Forwarding Behaviors
Sponsoring Agency: NJ DOE/Office of the Secretary of Higher Education (OSHE)
Project Period: 04/01/2021 – 08/31/2022
Total Award: $263,339 (No Indirect Costs)
Abstract
The CS Hub at FDU, in partnership with 6 LEAs, aims to expand equitable access for all K-12 students and participation in high-quality CS education via professional learning for educators, curricula development and promoting the expansion of CS activities at NJ schools, beyond the partnering LEAs. The project will target schools with significant populations of students underserved in CS, and will engage administrators, teachers, parents, and other stakeholders in a partnership rooted in best practices and research. The project team brings together the expertise of CS faculty researchers focused on inclusive CS curriculum development and teacher preparation in STEM, an administrator, school of education faculty and school administrators. The project will provide a framework to build a community of learners beyond the 17-month period. Stakeholders will be involved, including parents, community leaders and school administrators, to broaden their views on CS via school and community events. Our efforts will institutionalize CS education at partner schools by expanding access and instituting extracurricular activities.
PI/PD Name: Liu, Yaoqing, Ph.D.
Department/School: School of Engineering
Project Title: Leveraging Biometrics and Smart Contracts to Control Access to IOTs
Sponsoring Agency: SRC-CiTER/Clarkson University Agreement
Project Period: 07/1/20– 12/31/21
Total Award: $33,825 (No Indirect Costs)
Abstract
Internet of Things (IoT) security breaches have been dominating the spotlights. Many IoT attacks, e.g., Mirai DDoS attacks, have caused considerable loss to innocent individuals and organizations. This work proposes to leverage biometrics and smart contracts to control access to IoT. Specifically, biometrics authentication first needs to be available in a smart device. Second, the IoT owner registers the smart device, IoT devices and gateway to a blockchain service, e.g., Ethereum, through a smart contact, which defines who can access the IoT devices and with a deposit of cryptocurrency. An attacker first needs to communicate with the gateway, which will contact the smart contract for verification of the attacker’s credentials. The smart contract ensures that the deposit of a malicious user will be forfeited to the owner, if the verification fails during the biometric authentication process at the smart device. This solution leverages biometrics to enable high-level IoT security to benefit the IoT owner and meanwhile enforces a high penalty to deter adversarial users.
PI/PD Name: Liu, Yaoqing, Ph.D.
Department/School: School of Engineering
Project Title: Network-wide Verification on IPv6 Forwarding Behaviors
Sponsoring Agency: Comcast (Transfer funding from Clarkson University)
Project Period: 06/1/20 – 12/31/22
Total Award: $37,990 (No Indirect Costs)
Abstract
IPv6 Internet traffic volume on the Internet has been growing significantly since the World IPv6 Launch Day in 2012. The global IPv6 adoption has been over 23% and more than 9 million domain names have deployed IPv6 [1]. Recently, IPv6 Segment Routing (SRv6) [2] has shown great potentials to facilitate the movement of IPv6 traffic in modern IP networks by its networking programming capabilities on IPv6 packets. Meanwhile, the global IPv6 forwarding table size has increased considerably to over 48K as of today [3]. During the period of fast IPv6 deployment, it is vitally important to verify the correctness of network-‐wide IPv6 forwarding tables in real time as they evolve to larger scale. Particularly, network faults, including loops, black holes, and suboptimal routing, require substantial efforts to be mitigated and avoided. Our focus of this proposal is to quickly detect if there are loops and black holes among all IPv6 forwarding tables when they forward data packets to each other.
PI/PD Name: Liu, Yaoqing, Ph.D.
Department/School: School of Engineering
Project Title: Leveraging Biometrics and Smart Contracts to Control Access to IOTs
Sponsoring Agency: SRC-CiTER/Clarkson University Agreement
Project Period: 07/1/20– 12/31/22
Total Award: $33,825 (No Indirect Costs)
Abstract
Internet of Things (IoT) security breaches have been dominating the spotlights. Many IoT attacks, e.g., Mirai DDoS attacks, have caused considerable loss to innocent individuals and organizations. This work proposes to leverage biometrics and smart contracts to control access to IoT. Specifically, biometrics authentication first needs to be available in a smart device. Second, the IoT owner registers the smart device, IoT devices and gateway to a blockchain service, e.g., Ethereum, through a smart contact, which defines who can access the IoT devices and with a deposit of cryptocurrency. An attacker first needs to communicate with the gateway, which will contact the smart contract for verification of the attacker’s credentials. The smart contract ensures that the deposit of a malicious user will be forfeited to the owner if the verification fails during the biometric authentication process at the smart device. This solution leverages biometrics to enable high-level IoT security to benefit the IoT owner and meanwhile enforces a high penalty to deter adversarial users.
PI/PD Name: Liu, Yaoqing, Ph.D.
Department/School: School of Engineering
Project Title: Enabling Identity Assurance and Anti-Spoofing Capabilities for Non-Person Entities in a Mobile Mesh Network via an Information Centric Approach
Sponsoring Agency: NSF-CiTER/Clarkson University Sub-Award Project Period:
Project Period: 7/1/20 – 12/31/22
Total Award: $40,000 (No Indirect Costs)
Abstract
Many Non-Person Entities (NPE), e.g., drones for first response, used in DHS missions are operating in a low power, low bandwidth, and computing resource constrained networking environment. These NPE periodically collect critical information to first responders or base station, thus the NPE need to assure their identities with strong anti-spoofing capabilities. To this end, this research proposes to use a new information centric approach to achieve the goal. More specifically, data chunks in the network are identified by names, e.g., /clarkson/citer/biometrics, instead of locations, e.g., IP addresses. This way, first responders just need to express their interests with “what” without knowing “where” to retrieve the content they need. When a NPE generates the data, it signs the data via a pre-allocated public/private key pair by the first responder. Wherever the data is carried, any other entities can check its authenticity by verifying its signature. Unlike traditional approaches, which secure the communication channel between a sender and a receiver, e.g., SSH, this approach secures the data itself. Moreover, this new approach features in-network caching and stateful forwarding, which are particularly important in a mobile and intermitted networking environment where data packets may be dropped frequently.
PI/PD Name: Mondal, Kalyan
Co-PIs: Ihab Darwish
Department/School: Gildart Haase School of Computer Sciences and Engineering
Project Title: Growing a Sustainable Cyber Scholarship Pipeline through Outreach and Curriculum Enhancement
Sponsoring Agency: National Security Agency/Department of Defense
Project Period: 9/3/2023 – 12/31/2024
Total Award: Total Budget: $68,645 (includes $3,705 in indirect costs)
Subrecipient PI Name: Mondal, Kalyan
Supporting Personnel: Vatsa, Avimanyou; Robertson, Mark; Darwish, Ihab
Department/School: Gildart Haase School of Computer Sciences and Engineering
Project Title: NCAE-C Education Pathway Institution (EPI)
Sponsoring Agency: National Security Agency – Morraine Valley Community College
Project Period: 9/1/2022 – 8/31/2024
Total Award: Total Budget: $125,000 (includes $42,200 in indirect costs)
Purpose: Moraine Valley Community College has entered into an agreement with FDU to partner with high school districts and boards towards securing NJ State approval of RING-based cybersecurity curriculum.
PI/PD Name: Mondal, Kalyan
Co-PIs: Ihab Darwish
Department/School: Gildart Haase School of Computer Sciences and Engineering
Project Title: Growing a Sustainable Cyber Scholarship Pipeline through Outreach and Curriculum Enhancement
Sponsoring Agency: National Security Agency/Department of Defense
Project Period: 9/12/2022 – 12/11/2023
Total Award: Total Budget: $291,687 (includes $2,883 in indirect costs)
Continuing Cyber Scholars Supported by the Grant: Three students from the BSCS program at the Florham campus.
New Cyber Scholars Supported by the Grant: One student from the BSCS program at the Florham campus.
PI/PD Name: Mondal, Kalyan
Co-PIs: Ihab Darwish, Ravi Rao, Erdal Kose and Yaoqing Liu
Department/School: Gildart Haase School of Computer Sciences and Engineering
Project Title: Growing a Sustainable Cyber Scholarship Pipeline through Outreach and Curriculum Enhancement
Sponsoring Agency: National Security Agency/Department of Defense
Project Period: 9/3/2021 – 12/31/2022
Total Award: Total Budget: $375,376 (includes $15,937 in indirect costs)
Abstract
The Basic Scholarship proposal describes the process we adopted to advertise and recruit current eligible students from a large pool of CS and IT majors. We will identify high schools to extend our Computing and Security Enrichment and Outreach Program (CSEOP) to greater numbers, and work with community colleges for further outreach and articulations. PI Mondal and co-PI Darwish will be publicizing and managing the DoD CySP on both NJ campuses and providing support to the student CySP Scholars.
Continuing Cyber Scholars Supported by the Grant: Two students from the BSCS program at the Metropolitan campus and two others from the BSCS program at the Florham campus.
New Cyber Scholars Supported by the Grant: Two students from the BSCS program at the Florham campus.
PI/PD Name: Mondal, Kalyan
Co-PIs: Ihab Darwish, Ravi Rao, Erdal Kose, and Yaoqing Liu
Department/School: Gildart Haase School of Computer Sciences and Engineering
Project Title: Growing a Sustainable Cyber Scholarship Pipeline through Outreach and Curriculum Enhancement
Sponsoring Agency: National Security Agency/Department of Defense
Project Period: 9/9/2020 – 12/30/2021
Total Award: Total Budget: $335,322
Continuing Cyber Scholars Supported by the Grant: Two students from the BSCS program at the Metropolitan campus.
New Cyber Scholars Supported by the Grant: Two students from the BSCS program at the Florham campus.
PI/PD Name: Mondal, Kalyan
Co-PIs: Ravi Rao and Erdal Kose
Department/School: Gildart Haase School of Computer Sciences and Engineering
Project Title: Building a Sustainable Cyber Scholarship Pipeline through Outreach, Competition, Curriculum Development and Capacity Building
Sponsoring Agency: National Security Agency/Department of Defense
Project Period: 9/9/2019 – 6/30/2022 (includes NCE)
Total Award: Total Budget: $328,503 (includes Indirect Costs of $61,869)
- Recruitment/Basic Scholarship: $178,541 (includes two scholarships and stipends of $139,936, travel $3,500 and indirect costs of $12,235.)
- Capacity Building: Subprojects A & B: $149,962 (includes IC $49,634)
Abstract
The Basic Scholarship proposal describes the process we adopted to advertise and recruit current eligible students from a large pool of CS, IT and Electrical Engineering majors. For this proposal, we envisage improving our recruitment and retention process of cyber scholars by enhancing our existing outreach, admissions, and retention processes. We plan to extend our Computing and Security Enrichment and Outreach Program (CSEOP) to a larger number of high school students to help build the “cyber student pipeline.” The Cyber Outreach Coordinator will help the PI in identifying schools and community colleges for further outreach and the CSC in publicizing and managing the DoD CySP on both NJ campuses and providing support to the awardees.
New Cyber Scholars Supported by the Grant: Two students from the BSCS program at the Metropolitan campus.
PI/PD Name: Mondal, Kalyan
Co-PIs: Ravi Rao, Olexander Rudnyi, and William Phillips
Department/School: Gildart Haase School of Computer Sciences and Engineering
Project Title: Developing Hands-on Exercises for Secure Embedded System Design & Security Data Analytics for Computing and Engineering Students
Sponsoring Agency: National Security Agency (CNAP-CAE Grant)
Project Period: 9/1/2017 – 6/30/2019 (includes NCE)
Total Award: Total Budget: $298,472 (incudes Indirect Costs)
Executive Summary
Fairleigh Dickinson University (FDU) has been offering two undergraduate degree programs, at its Metropolitan campus, in Computer Science (CS) and Information Technology (IT) with concentrations in cybersecurity, information assurance, and forensics, as a CAE-CDE institution. A new MS degree program in Cybersecurity and Information Assurance (MSCSIA) was developed and will start in Fall 2017. All these programs offer students a project-based learning and some hands-on lab exercises. Still, there is further need to improve student cyber-defense learning experiences not only in the computing fields but also in engineering. This proposal is developed with the dual goal of offering new NSA/DHS recognized focus areas to the current CAE-C degree majors as well as extending cyber defense education to the engineering students by introducing hands-on cyber experiences in existing or new courses.
The advent of billions of Internet-connected devices (Internet of Things, IoT) and their vulnerabilities to cyber-attacks, make all developers of cyber-physical systems including household appliances, automobiles, etc. realize the weaknesses in the design and fix them in time to avoid potential attacks. Students pursuing studies in engineering disciplines need to have a security mindset and learn secure system design principles. Also, a large amount of data gets generated and stored from IoT, social media, and other networked systems every second of the day. E-commerce is benefiting from Big Data Analytics by making customized merchandise recommendations. Similar techniques can be used to find potential cyber threats and attacks.
Upon reviewing FDU’s engineering and computing curriculum, we found that three knowledge areas, viz., embedded systems design, systems programming, and Big Data analytics need to be combined with hands-on cyber exercises. This will allow engineering and computing students to become security conscious, incorporate secure design principles, and apply Big Data analytics to find security threats.
This proposal includes three subprojects. The first one with co-PIs Rao and Mondal proposes a “model curriculum for secure embedded system design” (as applicable to IoT) both at the undergraduate and graduate levels. We introduce specific hands-on exercises, based on “private” networked Raspberry-PIs. Several pedagogical enhancements to the FDU courses are proposed to satisfy the model curriculum.
The second subproject led by co-PI Phillips addresses the need to introduce hands-on exercises involving OS kernel modifications, driver development, etc. to Systems Programming. Using the inexpensive and yet very powerful Beaglebone Black platform, several student lab exercises are proposed as part of a new course on Advanced Systems Programming. Such programmatic enhancements will help students in CS, Computer Engineering and Cybersecurity enhance Linux OS for secure embedded software design.
The third subproject led by co-PI Rudniy, proposes applying “Big Data” software systems like Apache Metron and Spot to analyze cybersecurity data. Currently, an existing multi-server system will be enhanced for this purpose. Such a system will be used to develop several cybersecurity lab exercises where data analysis for tracing attacks and forensics are of prime interest. This effort may lead to developing a program to offer a focus area on Data Security Analysis.
We will fully document and disseminate all the system architectures, lab exercises, codes, and test results through technical conferences, project webpage, and personal interactions to CAE-C institutions.