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Chriss Swaney
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For immediate release:
July 13, 2006

Carnegie Mellon Collaborates With Taiwanese Government To Create New Security Technology Research Program

Electrical and Computer Engineering Professor Tsuhan Chen will co-direct iCAST-Carnegie Mellon.

PITTSBURGH—Carnegie Mellon University has signed a $3 million agreement with the Taiwanese government, establishing a new research program and educational outreach initiative.

Research at the government-sponsored International Collaboration for Advancing Security Technology (iCAST-Carnegie Mellon) will focus on a wide variety of security issues, including developing software assurance tools, metrics to measure the effectiveness of intrusion-detection systems and secure video surveillance networks, according to Tsuhan Chen, a professor of electrical and computer engineering and co-director of iCAST-Carnegie Mellon. Twenty Taiwanese researchers are scheduled to visit Carnegie Mellon to begin work on a variety of security-related projects designed to significantly improve both U.S. and Asian advanced security technologies.

"Signing this agreement reaffirms our ongoing relationships with Taiwan," said Carnegie Mellon Provost and Senior Vice President Mark S. Kamlet. "We will work closely with Taiwanese officials to identify key research opportunities."

Pradeep K. Khosla, dean of Carnegie Mellon's College of Engineering, said the agreement is an important part of the university's strategy to compete and participate in the global marketplace.

Besides performing security research, an additional seven Taiwanese professionals will take a curriculum of security courses offered by Carnegie Mellon's CERT^® Coordination Center, part of the university's Software Engineering Institute. CERT offers public and private training courses for technical staff and managers of computer security incident response teams, as well as system administrators and other technical personnel interested in network security. The researchers will take a variety of courses, including information security for technical staff, computer forensics, advanced incident handling and a workshop involving risk management exercises.

The iCAST-Carnegie Mellon program marks the university's second research collaboration with Taiwan. In 2003, Carnegie Mellon established ties with the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) and National Chiao-Tung University (NCTU) in Hsinchu, a research-rich area south of Taipei.

Funding of $1 million each year for the next three years was provided by the National Science Council of Taiwan. A similar program also exists at the University of California, Berkeley.