The University of Hawaii at Manoa (UHM) is designated as a NSA/DHS Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Defense Research (CAE-R) from May 2015 to June 2019 by National IA Education & Training Programs (NIETP), because of our strong emphasis on cyber security research and solid cyber security education programs. At the ceremony, Prof. Yingfei Dong (UHM CAE-R Principal) and Prof. David Chin (ICS Chair) were shown with Dr. Leonard T. Reinsfelder (Associate Director for Education and Training at NSA), Lynne Clark (Chief, National Information Assurance Education and Training Program), and Jacqueline Sullivan (Acting Program Lead for the Department of Homeland Security’s National Cybersecurity Training & Education Program). Our CAE-R is re-designated from 2019 to 2024.
Our research programs across the campus consist of a few research labs and research groups
With this designation, UHM faculty and staffs have further successfully established multiple new security educational programs, obtained various grants/awards, and recruited many security-focused students.
NSF/NSA GenCyber Hawaii 2015-2019
We have held 18 camps across 4 islands with 600+ campers, involving many high schools, Honolulu Community College, Maui College, Hawaii Community College, Kauai Community College, Pacific Center for Advanced Technology Training (PCATT), ISSA Hawaii Chapter. We also hosted two CTF events. Presented Cyber Security Boot Camp to high school and middle school students. NSA, PCATT, ITS, Maui College, Kauai Community College, Hawaii Community College and teachers from Aiea and Kaiser High Schools were used as teachers for the Boot Camp. Prof. Gerald Lau taught an ICS 499 with ITS staff for a class to create the curriculum for the event.
In 2018, we also organized
GenCyber Jr. Camp at Leilehua School on October 8-11, 2018.
GenCyber Camp at Waipahu High School on June 16-20, 2018.
GenCyber Summer Student Camps on June 4-8, 2018. We had camps on the 4 islands of Hawai'i, Kauai, Maui and Oahu for high school students in grades 9 - 12. We also considered intermediate students in grades 7 - 8 to participate in camps.
AFRL Cyber Spectrum Collaborative Research Environment (C-SCoRE) program at UHM, 2017-2019.
Because we will be short of a few million cyber security professionals by 2022, it will greatly affect the ability of the Department of Defense (DoD) and armed services. Therefore, Air Force Research Lab started this C-SCRoRE program in 2016 in order to attract top ROTC cadets to grasp key skills against the threat of cyber warfare.
We have successfully obtained several grants for security-related research and education
AFRL Cyber Spectrum Collaborative Research Environment (C-SCoRE) program, Oct 1st, 2018 -Jun 30th. 2019 (subcontract $164K), recruited 8 AF ROTC cadets to learn basic skills for cyber security operations
NSA/NSF GenCyber, “2018 GenCyber Introduction to Cybersecurity for Students”, $73,850, March, 2018.
NSF-1738824 “CSP4Hawaii: Deployment of Computer Science Principles Courses within Secondary Schools in Hawaii”, $999,239, Aug. 2017 to Jul. 2020.
AFRL “Cyber Spectrum Collaborative Research Environment (C-SCoRE) program”, Nov.20th, 2017-July 31st, 2018 (subcontract $95K), recruited 5 AF ROTC cadets to learn cyber security skills
AFOSR, “Monoidal computers, networks and strategic learning: Methods for Adaptive Defense in Cyber Security (MADCybS)”, $640K, 2015-2019
and other grants
We have also built up our infrastructure with the help of existing grants such as NSF SFS award (2017-2022).
(1) We have fully completed our SFS office (Holmes Hall 410). Thanks for the generous support of Department of Electrical Engineering and Chair Prof. Wayne Shiroma. We have 12 office desks and 12 computer chairs plus additional lab benches and cabinets to host all our SFS related equipment.
(2) We have also developed a Cybersecurity laboratory (Holmes Hall 488): The 20 ft by 20 ft laboratory has 3 testing benches. In addition to standard electronic instruments and computers, the lab is equipped with one spectrum analyzer, four sets of USRPs, and various RF antennas. Current research projects include: (1) Privacy in Mobile Advertising; (2) Cognitive Spectrum Sharing using RF Machine Learning; (3) Physical Layer Security with Reconfigurable Antennas.
(To be updated)