Carnegie Mellon CyLab to Join Innovative New Industry Consortium with Northrop Grumman and Other Academic Institutions

December 1, 2009

Contact: Chriss Swaney
Carnegie Mellon University
412.268.5776

PITTSBURGH—Carnegie Mellon University's CyLab will join Northrop Grumman Corp. (NGC), a leading global security company, and two other research universities to form the Cybersecurity Research Consortium to address the nation's most critical cyber threats.

           
The research initiative, launched today at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., is designed to accelerate the transfer of technology from the lab to commercial use.

           
"In this consortium, researchers from Carnegie Mellon CyLab will work side-by-side with Northrop Grumman researchers to address critical real-world challenges by transitioning and further developing CyLab technologies," said CyLab Technical Director Adrian Perrig, a professor of electrical and computer engineering and engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon.

           
In addition to Northrop Grumman and Carnegie Mellon CyLab, the new consortium will include The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) and Purdue University's Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security (CERIAS).

           
The universities were chosen for their long-term, leading-edge research in cybersecurity and their national standing in this important arena.

           
"Carnegie Mellon developed the first federally funded cybersecurity program, the CERT-CC (Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Center), in 1989 in response to the well-known Internet worm incident the previous year. As a result of this first major cybersecurity incident, CyLab has grown to be one of the largest cybersecurity academic research centers in the world," said Robert Brammer, chief technology officer, Northrop Grumman Information Systems.

           
Carnegie Mellon CyLab is a cross-disciplinary, university-wide research program dedicated to cybersecurity, privacy and dependability. It involves six Carnegie Mellon colleges, and includes more than 50 faculty members and 130 graduate students, as well as numerous partners in industry and government. Several research centers within CyLab also focus on cutting-edge research, including the Trustworthy Computing Center, the Biometrics Center, the Usable Privacy and Security Lab (CUPS) and the Mobility Research Center. In the past decade CyLab research has contributed to innovations in mobile ad-hoc network security, sensor network security and trustworthy computing. It also has contributed to an increased understanding and usability of privacy and security tools.

           
Consortium members will coordinate research projects, share information, develop curricula and author case studies, and provide broader learning experiences for students and the global defense community.