Faculty Awarded State and Federal Research Grants

09/06/2017

Several Jacksonville State faculty have been awarded research grants recently from state and federal agencies.

Guillermo Francia, a distinguished professor and director of the JSU Center for Information Security and Assurance, has been awarded a $119K grant from the National Security Agency to fill a void in cyber security training nationwide – designing and implementing educational activities to better train the cybersecurity workforce. The JSU team will develop and enhance applied embedded and industrial control system security curriculum, provide cost-effective hardware and software training solutions, and devise tools to facilitate the sharing of teaching expertise and curriculum modules for widespread adoption nationwide.

Shih-Kai Huang, assistant professor of emergency management, has been awarded a $116K grant from the National Science Foundation to collaborate with Oklahoma State University on a study of how households assess risks and take protective action during tornado threats. The goal is to advance decision-making research by investigating household tornado risks. The findings may help emergency management practitioners and meteorologists better understand how households process the tornado risk information that is distributed by the National Weather Service and local emergency offices during high-risk tornado events.

Joseph Scott Morgan, a distinguished scholar in the JSU Center for Applied Forensics, has been awarded an Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant from the Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs to improve the processing of death scenes. The center will provide training sessions over 12 months to 100 local law enforcement and public safety professionals actively engaged in the documentation and processing of death scenes. 

As these faculty demonstrate, JSU professors contribute not only in the classroom but also through research and service to the community.