LSU Cybersecurity Program Connects Students with Near-Guaranteed Jobs

The Hunt for Good Hackers

Few students realize, even once they get to college, how many lucrative jobs would be available to them if they delved deeper into computer science. This is what motivated the team behind the LSU Applied Cybersecurity Lab to apply for the National Science Foundation’s Scholarships for Service program, which now pays generous scholarships to LSU students and connects them with guaranteed jobs after graduation. One of them is Ryan Maggio from New Orleans and Slidell, who will graduate with a Ph.D. from LSU this spring. Together with an industry partner in the lab, Andrew Case of Volexity, Maggio has already developed new and nimble software to help rapidly detect and analyze sophisticated malware that spies on users, called spyware.

The LSU Applied Cybersecurity Lab connects students with industry and highly profitable careers that have direct impact on national and state security.

“My role in the LSU Applied Cybersecurity Lab is to provide an industry perspective on topics that are relevant to actual practitioners in the field. The gap between what many academic institutions study or research and the problems actually faced by the industry is well known in our community, but as part of this group, I help ensure students’ research is immediately impactful to investigators around the world, and gives students a tremendous advantage when applying for jobs and internships.”

Andrew Case, director of research at Volexity, a national leader in incident response and threat intelligence, and close collaborator of students and faculty in the LSU Applied Cybersecurity Lab