Travel: NSF Student Travel Grant for 2023 IEEE Secure Development Conference (SecDev)

This project supports student attendance at the 2023 IEEE Cyber Security Development (SecDev) conference to be held in Atlanta in October 2023. Research on software security usually focuses on detecting vulnerabilities in software and attacks on resources. However, there is little attention to how programmers can develop secure software from the ground up. This conference series on Secure Development (SecDev) focuses on this important area. The 2023 IEEE SecDev Conference aims to continue its mission of providing a forum where researchers, practitioners, and decision-makers can meet to discuss ideas that focus on building-in security into our systems. The support for the conference is important for educating and training the workforce in this area and helping provide a pathway to research careers. The technical advances presented by the conference are critical to the development of secure software, which is important to society. SecDev encourages students to consider big ideas that lead to a stimulating, thoughtful, and perhaps (gently) provocative discussion. This project sponsors travel expenses for students to attend the conference. Participation in the conference provides students with opportunities to observe high-quality presentations and interact with senior researchers in the field, consequently exerting a positive impact on the quality of their research. The training and development of students in this way also help widen the talent pool of professionals and researchers focused on addressing the challenges of developing critical secure systems and services, leading to potential new areas of inquiry in this domain. This project also broadens the participation in the conference of underrepresented students in computing. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.