Data Science Faculty Receives Prestigious National Science Foundation CAREER Award
The University of Virginia's School of Data Science is pleased to announce that Wajih Ul Hassan, an assistant professor, has received one of the National Science Foundation's most prestigious awards to support his research in cybersecurity.
The Faculty Early Career Development Program, known as CAREER, provides funding to early-career faculty who have demonstrated the potential to serve as leaders in research and education.
Hassan, who holds a dual appointment with UVA's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, will work with the research team he leads at DART (Detecting, Analyzing, and Responding to Cyber Threats) Lab, to develop automated techniques to quickly detect, investigate, and respond to evasive and sophisticated cyber threats that target modern data centers.
Hassan and his team will use data provenance — that is, the process of documenting the origins of data and how it changes — to help develop effective threat response frameworks that are powered by artificial intelligence.
The project will also include an educational component by working with diverse groups of students through hands-on activities that equip them with critical cybersecurity skills.
The NSF CAREER award totals approximately $725,000 and will support the team's work over a five-year period.
Prior to joining UVA in 2022, Hassan worked as a research scientist at Stellar Cyber and also served as a visiting assistant professor at Lahore University of Management Sciences in Pakistan.
His research focuses on using data provenance approaches and scalable system designs to better secure complex networked systems.
