Announcement / January 2018

Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity Announces 2018 Research Grantees

The UC Berkeley Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity (CLTC) is proud to announce the recipients of our 2018 research grants. In total, 37 different groups of researchers will share a total of over $1 million in funding to support a broad range of initiatives related to cybersecurity and other emerging issues at the intersection of technology and society.

The purpose of CLTC’s research funding is to not only address the most interesting and complex challenges of today’s socio-technical security environment, but also grapple with the broader challenges of the next decade’s environment. The Center is focusing its research in four priority areas: machine learning and artificial intelligence, building the cyber-talent pipeline, improving cybersecurity governance, and protecting vulnerable online populations.

Thirteen of the projects are renewals of projects that were funded previously by CLTC. New initiatives to be funded include improving the cybersecurity of local governments; protecting vulnerable individuals and organizations from state surveillance; defending against social engineering attacks; understanding the security implications of 5G networks; developing secure contracts through blockchain; and more.

“We’re extremely excited both to have reinvested in some of the most exciting projects from the first cohorts of CLTC grantees, and to continue to grow our community of CLTC researchers,” said Betsy Cooper, Executive Director of CLTC.

The 37 winning proposals were chosen through review by a cross-disciplinary committee made up of UC Berkeley faculty members and administrators. Two types of grants were awarded: seed grants, generally below $15,000, are intended to fund an exploratory study, while discrete project grants of up to $100,000 were given to projects that have defined boundaries with clear outcomes and impact potential.

All principal investigators (PIs) have a UC Berkeley research affiliation, but many of the initiatives involve partners from outside institutions, including Bar-Ilan University, Carnegie Mellon, the City and County of San Francisco, New York University, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, The Policy Lab, the United States Department of Agriculture, University of British Columbia, University of Michigan, and the University of Washington.

“Cybersecurity as a problem set continues to expand from the growing technical challenges of digital systems, to the political, economic, and societal challenges that digital-human interactions present,” said Steven Weber, Faculty Director of CLTC and Professor in the UC Berkeley School of Information. “CLTC is privileged to be supporting a broad range of basic and applied research projects that will contribute to making the future digital environment a place where human beings actually want to live.”

Visit this page for summaries of CLTC’s 2018 grantees, or check out our 2016 and 2017 grantees.