Symantec Announces Graduate Fellowship Recipients

Unique Program Allows Award Winners to Mentor Under Top Industry Researchers While Leveraging Symantec's Research Resources

Symantec today announced the recipients of its new Symantec Graduate Fellowship program to identify and support exceptional graduate students who are investigating novel ways to solve real-world problems in protecting security and availability. In addition to a cash stipend, recipients will have the opportunity to work directly with Symantec's top researchers on new investigations and will also have access to security insight from Symantec's global intelligence network.

The Symantec Research Labs team conducted the assessment and selection process, choosing David Brumley, Jack Lange, and Justin Ma to be awarded full one-year fellowships covering 100 percent of tuition and fees, along with a competitive stipend to fund ongoing research in their respective areas of expertise. The program also includes the option of a salaried summer internship, offering recipients direct on-site collaboration with leading scientists from Symantec Research Labs. This allows the students to research and develop next-generation technologies that could impact millions of customers, in a real-world industry environment.

"Symantec is committed to fostering innovative research and supporting promising new technologies across the security and availability landscape," said Darren Shou, senior manager of the Symantec Research Labs University Research Program. "Our support of the nation's top graduate students underscores this commitment, as these brilliant researchers apply their ingenuity and passion to solving relevant customer challenges."

David Brumley is a doctoral candidate in computer science at Carnegie Mellon University. Brumley is working on novel binary analysis techniques for computer security. Using formal methods in program analysis, model checking, and programming language theory, he is developing innovative intrusion prevention techniques that can be used to automatically generate vulnerability-based signatures. This technology promises to help proactively protect computer users from many classes of critical network attacks.

Jack Lange is a doctoral candidate in electrical engineering and computer science at Northwestern University. Lange is interested in high performance distributed communication frameworks for optical networks. By observing current demands on the network, his technology can automatically reconfigure the existing topology to dynamically improve network performance.

Justin Ma is a doctoral candidate in computer science and engineering at the University of California, San Diego. Ma's primary work revolves around malicious code analysis and defense. He recently collaborated on what became the largest honeypot system in existence today, creating a system of hundreds of thousands of virtual machines that lure and trap attackers.

Symantec's University Research Program, a part of Symantec Research Labs, was established to facilitate and coordinate Symantec's involvement with universities that emphasize research and study in the areas of information security and availability. The group is also dedicated to increasing the number of students enrolling into computer science and electrical engineering academic programs. In addition, the University Research Program funds and provides feedback on university research projects, conducts technical exchange seminars with leading academic researchers, and provides input on applicable course curricula - Symantec.