We plan to develop an accelerated, industry-focused masters program to train and produce the next-generation technical professionals who pursue careers in cybersecurity.
Based on the UO's significant success with its Graduate Internship Program in other areas, this new program will consist of a novel curriculum with close interaction with the cybersecurity industry. During the initial phase of track development, it will be housed in the Graduate School in collaboration with the Computer Information Sciences department as an experimental track.
In order to earn their Master's degree, students will need to take 24 graded credits during the summer and fall term and then 30 research internship credits at our collaborative partner companies over the following three terms. As the faculty of the program will frequently interact with the top-notch professionals in those companies, the design and content of the curriculum will be heavily based on the input from leading security companies, in order to prepare the students to be more readily to fill the frequent void in cybersecurity-related job positions.
The 9-month extended internship will in particular enhance a student’s hands-on security skills, leadership, and communication skills, and will be co-supervised by the mentor of the student at the internship and the advisor at UO’s cybersecurity master program. We will also be working with Western Oregon University, Southern Oregon University, and other regional schools and community colleges in building the pipeline of students entering this program.
If you are interested in learning more about this program, please contact Prof. Jun Li (lijun@cs.uoregon.edu) for more details. We are further particularly interested in working with cybersecurity companies for any possible collaboration, such as hosting our Master students for an extended period of internship.