Graduate Fellowship in Cybersecurity Research
This competition is open to Stanford doctoral students performing cybersecurity research for the future electric grid. These fellowships are meant to support advanced doctoral students (second year and beyond) to pursue innovative research projects beyond the proof-of-concept stage toward impactful applications.
Bits & Watts is a Stanford University initiative bringing together multi-disciplinary research teams to develop innovations for the 21st century electric grid. It works to develop a new grid paradigm that is needed to incorporate large amounts of clean power and a growing number of distributed energy resources, while simultaneously enabling grid reliability, resilience, security and affordability. We see increasing interest from our industry affiliates on electric grid cybersecurity, especially cybersecurity vulnerability issues for inverter-based distributed energy resources. Electric utilities have been dealing with operational technology security for decades, but inverter-based DERs (like roof top solar, home battery storage, etc.) at the grid edge security are new to them. These DERs are highly distributed, limited in bandwidth, memory and storage.
The goals of this fellowship are to train the next generation of leaders and to support the development of applied research that has the potential to address cybersecurity challenges for DERs.
Stanford doctoral students currently in their second year or beyond can apply. Proposed projects must pursue activities that are focused on an area relevant to cybersecurity for the future electric grid, clearly outline a research plan that will help advance innovative research beyond proof-of-concept toward impactful real-world solutions and be conducted under the guidance of one or more Stanford University faculty members. A faculty member may only endorse one graduate fellowship application per cycle and may only have one funded Bits & Watts Graduate Fellow in their lab at a time. Two graduate fellowships will be awarded.
Funding and Duration
This graduate fellowship will provide a stipend and tuition support. An annual stipend ($12,410 per quarter in 2021-22) and tuition for two 4-quarter academic years beginning in the fall quarter. This fellowship will also provide $5000 in research or conference travel funding. This research funding will be provided through the purchase and payment of direct expenses, by Stanford. Any items purchased with this Stanford funding are considered the property of Stanford University.
- Cybersecurity research for the electric grid
Stanford doctoral students currently in their second year or beyond can apply. The graduate fellow must perform their research in connection with one or more Stanford faculty members. The student’s primary faculty advisor will need to serve as the student's endorser and recommender on the proposal. The primary faculty advisor must be an eligible Principal Investigator (PI) per Stanford policy.
Proposals should include the future electric grid cybersecurity challenge your project addresses, your solution, your proposed research activities, the potential impact of your solution, a research timeline with target metrics for the project (e.g. performance, scale, material composition, efficiency, etc.) plus justification of why meeting these targets will enable an impactful solution to a real-world problem and an outline of what the future trajectory of this work might be beyond the term of the fellowship.
Since early-stage research projects inevitably involve risk and uncertainty, the evaluation process will attempt to balance the risks and potential impacts of a successful project. This research funding is intended to encourage graduate students to delve more deeply into applied research with the potential to electric grid cybersecurity challenges.
Project proposals with translational potential, from diverse domains and research areas, are preferred. Non-limiting examples include the scaling of a proof-of-concept algorithm, experiment or device, a focused effort to improve the resiliency, reliability, security or other performance metric of a new technology or technology concept.
Proposal Review
The objective of the review process is to identify high-quality candidates and projects that are consistent with the goals of this program. The proposals will be screened for relevance and then reviewed by Stanford experts with knowledge related to the areas of research but who are not involved in the proposed projects. The opinions of additional experts outside of Stanford may be sought, with the requirement that the reviewer maintains the confidentiality of the proposed research.
Reviews are performed confidentially and in the exercise of academic judgment and discretion by Stanford experts, and other experts if needed, in adherence with general principles of conflict of interest (financial and otherwise) in effect at Stanford.
Full applications will be evaluated on these criteria:
- The proposed research. Is it innovative and high quality with a reasonable execution plan and measurable deliverables?
- Significance of and potential for demonstrable impact on the security of the electric grid.
- The future trajectory and translational potential of this work beyond the term of the fellowship.
- Applicant qualifications and letters of recommendation.