Dear Colleagues: As the year draws to a close, I wish to take the opportunity to provide you with an update on UIC's IGERT program on Electronic Security and Privacy. The ESP-IGERT program is a doctoral research traineeship program aimed at providing an interdisciplinary research and education to combat the threats of the cyberspace. PhD students from various disciplines will come together to tackle the challenges of computer viruses, botnets, trojans, worms, and identity theft. The program was established with a five-year, 3.2 million dollar grant from the National Science Foundation. Approximately 15 faculty from the Colleges of Engineering, Liberal Arts and Sciences, Business Administration and Applied Health Sciences participate in the program and share their expertise in electronic security and privacy with our students. Below I report the progress on the various activities of the IGERT during the past year. 
 A unique feature of the ESP-IGERT courses is that they are team-taught by faculty members from two different disciplines, with both professors attending and co-teaching in the classroom. Two ESP-IGERT classes were taught in Spring 2013, Public Policy, Law and Ethics, team-taught by Robert Sloan's (CS-ENG) and Richard Warner's (Chicago-Kent College of Law); and Human Factors in ESP team-taught by Steve Jones and Leilah Lyons The seeds of an interdisciplinary research program were planted with this cohort, as the students paired with others outside of their home discipline to pursue projects concerning phishing, security threat analysis and personal information disclosure in a variety of online settings such as email, blogs, product reviews, and health discussion boards. We anticipate that several of the class projects will result in conference submissions and presentations over the coming year, as students refine their analyses and pursue additional related questions. 
Our weekly ESP-IGERT Colloquia sessions have featured an interesting and diverse group of speakers.
Our seminars are held on Mondays between 2-3 p.m in SEO 1000. These sessions are open to the entire UIC community, so we hope you will join us next semester! I am pleased to share the status of the ESP-IGERT with each one of you. The ESP-IGERT is on the move, and is strongly positioned towards addressing the challenges of modern day cyber-threats. Sincerely, venkat Venkat Venkatakrishnan Director, IGERT Program on Electronic Security & Privacy Associate Professor of Computer Science Office of the ESP-IGERT University of Illinois at Chicago 851 S Morgan St, Room 918 Chicago, IL 60607 p: 312 413 0365 f: 312 413 0024 |
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