Collaborative Research: Conference: 2025 Workshop for Aspiring PIs in Secure and Trusted Cyberspace

NSF’s Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC) program is interdisciplinary and highly competitive. New principal investigators who do not have experience with SaTC expectations and norms often struggle to write successful funding proposals. This workshop offers junior researchers without prior SaTC funding training and experience in proposal development. The workshop’s novelties include providing not just lectures, but hands-on experience such as writing a short mock proposal and participating in a peer-review session modeled on real NSF review panels. This provides participants with direct knowledge of the process as well as peer feedback on their proposed ideas. The workshop’s broader significance and importance lie in allowing junior researchers, especially those without pre-existing networks of successful SaTC researchers, to access implicit knowledge they may not otherwise have access to, enabling them to present their ideas in the best light. This helps ensure that promising ideas for new SaTC research will contribute to our overall understanding of cybersecurity. The 1.5-day workshop includes panel discussions and small-group mentoring from established SaTC researcher “coaches,” as well as mock panel review led by these coaches. Participants write mock proposals before arriving, edit them on day 1 after learning more about proposal writing, and review each others’ proposals on day 2. Participants leave the workshop with an increased understanding of the panel review process, explicit instruction in how to structure and format proposals to meet SaTC expectations, and an expanded peer and mentoring network. The workshop will help new investigators establish themselves within the security and privacy research community so that they can continue to contribute valuable research over the course of their careers. 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.