UND Electrical Engineering awarded research grants to help private industry partners combat cyber-attacks for UAS and banking industries

Students could start working on the projects as early as this fall University of North Dakota Electrical Engineering Assistant Professor Prakash Ranganathan has been awarded a grant to research cyber-security for unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) and to prepare students for careers in the industry. Rockwell Collins is funding the project in the amount of $20,000. Ranganathan’s strong proposal successfully competed against those from 39 other universities for consideration as part of the Rockwell Collins University Grant Allocation Program. “We believe Ranganathan\u27s proposal thoroughly addressed the criteria, and that this project will further the educational excellence of students while preparing them for rewarding engineering careers at Rockwell Collins,” said Elise Loan, university relations liaison with Rockwell Collins. Loan also said that Rockwell Collins looks forward to receiving feedback on the progress and success of the project from Roger French, a UND electrical engineering alumnus and principal engineering manager in commercial systems at Rockwell Collins. “We are very excited about the proposed project and appreciate the effort extended by the University of North Dakota to align the project to Rockwell Collins criteria,” Loan added. In a separate development, Ranganathan also has received a $2,500 award from the Wells Fargo Foundation to focus on security attacks on banking data sets. Both projects are expected to start in fall 2015 with undergraduate and graduate students working together to build a software-based simulator that will model cyber threats