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BPC COMPUTING RESEARCH PROGRAM FOR NYC HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS
Columbia University is partnering with the New York Academy of Sciences (NYAS) to run a special summer and academic year computer science research program for motivated students from underrepresented groups interested in computer science who have completed their sophomore or junior year of high school. The program is designed to encourage students' interest in computer science, to introduce participants to real-world scientific inquiry, and to raise awareness in careers in computer science. The program is funded by the National Science Foundation as part of the Broadening Participation in Computing (BPC) Program.

The program will start during the summer as part of the NYAS's Summer Research Training Program (SRTP) and continue during the school year. The program will expose students to cutting edge aspects of computing research, to broaden student perspectives of what constitutes computing research, foster their ability to do independent work, and encourage and develop their interests in computing disciplines. The research program will leverage unique computing facilities available at Columbia University. Student projects initiated during the summer will be further developed during the school year to provide the opportunity to compete in the New York City Science and Engineering Fair, the city's largest student science competition.

Students accepted into the program will have an opportunity to work on Secure Remote Computing Services (SRCS), a critical information technology (IT) infrastructure funded by the National Science Foundation as part of the Information Technology Research (ITR) for National Priorities Program. SRCS moves all application logic and data from insecure end-user devices, which attackers can easily corrupt, steal and destroy, to autonomic server farms in physically secure, remote data centers that can rapidly adapt to computing demands especially in times of crisis. Users can then access their computing state from anywhere, anytime, using simple, stateless Internet-enabled devices. SRCS builds on the hypothesis that a combination of lightweight process migration, remote display technology, overlay-based security and trust-management access control mechanisms, driven by an autonomic management utility, can result in a significant improvement in overall system reliability and security. The results of this proposed effort is enabling SRCS implementations to provide a myriad of benefits, including persistence and continuity of business logic, minimizing the cost of localized computing failures, robust protection against attacks, and transparent user mobility with global computing access. SRCS in time of crisis specifically addresses a major concern of national and homeland security. The substantially lowered total cost of ownership of applications running on SRCS is anticipated to dramatically reduce the gap between IT haves and have nots.

Interested students should apply directly with the SRTP program. Further information regarding the program is available via the SRTP. As part of this program, full scholarships will be made available to cover SRTP tuition costs. If students have missed the SRTP application deadline, they may directly contact the program directors listed below as an alternative application process.

Program Directors: Prof. Jason Nieh, Prof. Gail Kaiser, and Prof. Angelos Keromytis

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