JSU’s Xavier Francia awarded summer scholarship for cyber security program

06/06/2013

The Center for Trustworthy Cyber Infrastructure for the Power Grid (TCIPG) has awarded Mr. Xavier Francia a scholarship to attend the summer school for cyber infrastructure security and resiliency in St. Charles, IL. 

The center is composed of researchers from the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, Dartmouth College, Cornell University, UC Davis and Washington State University. The departments of Homeland Security and Energy fund the research program. Participants in the summer school will gain an understanding of smarter energy systems and the associated cyber security challenges. Experts from industry, national labs, academia and government will conduct the sessions. 

Xavier’s father, Dr. Guillermo Francia, III, professor of computer science and CISA director at JSU says of the accomplishment, "Being able to compete with other graduate students from well-named institutions and having been selected for the scholarship grant, Xavier brings great honor to JSU. His unique background in nuclear systems design and vulnerability assessment provides the NSF-funded Critical Infrastructure Security and Assessment Laboratory (CISAL) at JSU a tremendous boost in advancing industrial control system security research." 

Mr. Francia is a first-year graduate student in the Masters in Systems and Software Design (MSSD) program at JSU. “I intend to bring this experience to CISAL in order to promote its research objectives and its visibility in the field of Trustworthy Cyber Infrastructure,” says Mr. Francia.  “The knowledge that I will gain from the TCIPG summer school program could potentially enhance the security of nuclear thermal hydraulic systems, a critical aspect of nuclear power plants, as well as other national critical infrastructures."