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Tuesday, March 19th, 2024

NSA honors cyber security and mathematics researchers at ISEF 2017

Shining a spotlight on future generations of researchers, the National Security Agency (NSA) Research Directorate (RD) awarded creators of cyber security and mathematics research projects at the 2017 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF).

The event–an annual fair which brings together thousands of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) students–took place in Los Angeles, CA. Its focus is innovation, recognizing this year the achievements of two researchers, Rucha Joshi for the Science of Security award and Shobhita Sundaram for the Mathematics award.

Joshi, a student from Austin, Texas, created an algorithm that determines optimal low-power communications solutions in evolving networks, which they titled “Power-efficient, Delay and Spatial Error Tolerant, Dynamic 3D Network Analysis.”

Sundaram, from Greenwich, Connecticut, on the other hand, explored avenues of cancer research, with a model that helped identify pancreatic cancer biomarker proteins to allow for earlier diagnoses. That project was titled, “Detection of Premalignant Pancreatic Cancer via Computational Analysis of Serum Proteomic Profiles.”

“We look to grow a community of researchers doing scientifically backed research and support rigorous security research measures,” Adam Tagert, Science of Security Technical Lead, said. “We advance these two goals with our participation at ISEF.”

This marked the first year RD recognized outstanding projects in mathematics, and between its participants across all competitions, RD awarded a total of $6,000 to participants. RD also uses the fair to teach students, parents and STEM enthusiasts about career opportunities in cyber security and within the NSA itself.