Federal Grant Award Summary

The National Science Foundation's Division of Computing and Communication Foundations awarded $464,622 to The Research Foundation for the State University of New York (RF-SUNY) on October 1, 2026, under the Computer and Information Science and Engineering program (CFDA 47.070) to establish a Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) Site at the University at Albany. The project, titled "REU Site: Integrative Challenges in Cybersecurity—Deception, Remediation, and Resilient Systems," operates through September 30, 2029, and integrates three interconnected research tracks: adaptive digital environments that interact with attackers to collect behavioral threat intelligence; realistic simulated attack scenarios for industrial control systems to generate evaluation datasets; and methods ensuring artificial intelligence defense systems are reliable, transparent, and resistant to misuse. The program also incorporates organizational decision-analysis frameworks to examine how institutional leadership influences cyber incident outcomes.

The REU Site provides undergraduate students with hands-on research experience in advanced cybersecurity while addressing national infrastructure resilience needs. By combining intelligent deception techniques, automated system recovery methods, and human-centered decision analysis into a unified framework, the project advances workforce development in critical cybersecurity domains while strengthening defensive capabilities for essential infrastructure sectors including healthcare, energy, and financial systems. The award reflects the National Science Foundation's emphasis on REU Sites, which typically fund 8-10 students annually through three-year programs valued between $450,000 and $600,000.