Leading University Research Centers in the U.S. and India Announce Cybersecurity Collaboration

MBA Blog / 8th December 2016

Following a highly successful international cooperation that attracted more than 15,000 students, faculty, professionals, and supporters to the world’s largest student-run cybersecurity games, the New York University Tandon School of Engineering and the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur have signed a seven-year agreement to deepen their exchange in information security research and academics.

The agreement commits NYU Tandon – one of America’s first institutions of higher education with a cybersecurity program – and IIT Kanpur – one of India’s leading computer science universities – to exchanges that will defend critical infrastructure from cyberattacks and electronic warfare. The agreement calls for cooperative research, teaching projects, faculty and student exchanges, and scholarly seminars and workshops.

It formalizes and expands several years of cooperation, which included short-term faculty visits, student internships, and joint research. Starting in 2017, selected teaching and research professors and doctoral and master’s degree students will spend a semester or more on the exchange campus.

At NYU, the cooperation will fall under the auspices of the Center for Cybersecurity, an interdisciplinary institute that joins the engineers at NYU Tandon and NYU Abu Dhabi with scholars at the School of Law and other NYU schools in order to shape research, education, public discourse, policy, legal, and technological issues. The initiative at IIT Kanpur will be led by its Centre for Cyber Security for Critical Infrastructure.

“Both our institutions recognize the urgent need in our technology-driven economies for highly educated experts who will protect our critical infrastructure, businesses, and personal digital information,” said Ramesh Karri, professor of electrical engineering at NYU Tandon and co-founder of the NYU Center for Cybersecurity. “Cyber criminals know no boundaries, and we are proud to be taking this important step to broaden the international experience of the next generation of our cyber protectors. This agreement will also expand our ability to generate and propagate vital research with respected scholars at IIT Kanpur.”

Did You Know?

Unemployment in cybersecurity hovers near zero, and according to estimates by Cisco, there were one million cybersecurity job vacancies this year alone, including more than 200,000 in the United States. Frost & Sullivan, in an often-cited report, predicts 1.5 million unfilled security positions worldwide by 2020.