1/31/2008 4:46:00 AM ITI Staff
Written by ITI Staff
The Information Trust Institute (ITI) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) will offer its Summer Undergraduate Intern Program again in 2008 following the success of its inaugural offering in 2007. The program will once again pair promising undergraduate students from around the world with ITI faculty members who are doing research on information trust topics (including security, reliability, safety, privacy, survivability, and correctness) that are relevant to the students' interests.
The 2007 offering was received with great enthusiasm by both the faculty and students. 100% of faculty and student participants who responded to a follow-up survey indicated that they had a positive experience and would encourage other faculty and students to participate in future offerings. Many of the students had previously been limited to classroom work, and were excited by their experiences attacking real-world research problems and interacting with professors on an informal, individual basis. Several students reported that their internships had encouraged them to pursue graduate studies, particularly at Illinois, even if they had not previously considered postgraduate work. As participating Computer Science student Raoul Rivas put it, "I learned more than what I could have learned in any course and it was much more fun.... Illinois will be my first option" for graduate studies.
Faculty members also appreciated the program, since it not only provided direct support for their research efforts through the students' work, but also allowed them to build relationships with outstanding undergraduates, possibly leading to graduate work or other collaborations. "I hope some of the students decide to come back for graduate school," said Prof. Darko Marinov of the UIUC Department of Computer Science. A student who worked with Prof. David Nicol of the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering has already decided to apply for graduate admission at UIUC. "My student learned a lot about our software systems," said Nicol, "and the big payoff is that he's working on my research again."
In 2007, 18 students from around the U.S. and as far away as Serbia and India participated in the program under the leadership of Prof. Carl Gunter of the UIUC Department of Computer Science. Faculty from the UIUC departments of Computer Science, Electrical & Computer Engineering, and Aerospace Engineering, as well as the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, participated as mentors. In 2008, the program is being headed by Prof. Samuel King of the UIUC Department of Computer Science.
The internships, which are supported by state and federal funds, include stipends and, in some cases, an allocation for travel expenses. Interested undergraduate students in their second or third year at any university can apply for the program by following directions on the ITI web site (www.iti.uiuc.edu).
About the Information Trust Institute (ITI)
The Information Trust Institute is a multidisciplinary cross-campus research unit housed in the College of Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. It is an international leader combining research and education with industrial outreach in trustworthy and secure information systems. ITI brings together over 90 faculty, many senior and graduate student researchers, and industry partners to conduct foundational and applied research to enable the creation of critical applications and cyber infrastructures. In doing so, ITI is creating computer systems, software, and networks that society can depend on to be trustworthy, that is, secure, dependable (reliable and available), correct, safe, private, and survivable. Instead of concentrating on narrow and focused technical solutions, ITI aims to create a new paradigm for designing trustworthy systems from the ground up and validating systems that are intended to be trustworthy. www.iti.uiuc.edu
Contact: Molly M. Tracy, Associate Director, Information Trust Institute, 217/333-3437, mollyt AT iti.uiuc.edu.
Writer: Jenny Applequist, Information Trust Institute, 217/244-8920, applequi AT iti.uiuc.edu.
Released January 31, 2008
A printable PDF version of this press release is available.