Travel: NSF Student Travel Grant for 2025 IEEE International Symposium on Hardware-Oriented Security and Trust

This award will partially support about 50 U.S.-based students to attend the International Symposium on Hardware-Oriented Security and Trust (HOST) to be held in May 2025. HOST is one of the largest events focused on computer hardware security. Secure hardware, and supply chains for designing and making it, are critical to the computing and communication systems that underpin an increasing range of societal applications from autonomous vehicles to smart medical devices. The HOST conference aims to facilitate the rapid growth of hardware-based security research and development by highlighting new results around techniques, tools, design/test methods, architectures, circuits, and applications of secure hardware. Students supported by this award will be exposed to cutting-edge research and connected to experienced researchers and industry recruiters, benefiting both their research and their careers. In particular, the conference seeks to widen the pipeline of students entering the hardware security community, with the goal of benefiting not just the students but the community as a whole. To accomplish this, the selection committee will widely advertise the availability of support to students who might not otherwise be able to attend, including bachelors' and masters' students who often do not receive funding support. Students will be selected based on having a presentation at the conference, being first-time attendees, financial need, and institutional and topical diversity, with the goal of growing and broadening the talent pool of cybersecurity researchers and skilled workers. 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.