PhD Student Positions
While funding is not guaranteed, many of our PhD students have faculty support. Students who are seeking faculty support are encouraged to identify and connect with a faculty member whose research interests align with theirs and who may be willing to support a student's PhD studies. You may find it helpful to review the various research groups and areas on our website: https://www.augusta.edu/ccs/research.php. This page provides detailed information on research areas such as Distributed and Parallel Computing, Security and Privacy, Formal Methods, Software Engineering and Programming Languages, Information Systems, Cyber-Physical, IoT, and Edge Systems, as well as Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Data Science.
Contact Us
School of Computer and Cyber Sciences
Summerville Campus
706-721-1110
"Cyber Attack Detection Using Metadata Analysis and Edge-Based Real-Time Machine Learning on Sensor Data"
Principal Investigator: Dr. Gokila Dorai
Co-Principal Investigator: Dr. Gagan Agrawal.
Key Objectives: Provide enhanced, comprehensible solutions for sensor data classification, to offer
edge-based threat detection by optimized execution of complex models and to model
the IoT threat landscape.
Research Assistant Characteristics: For certain positions, seeking students with strong programming knowledge, programming experience in Python/Java, knowledge of IoT security, machine learning skills.
For other positions, seeking students with C/C++ programming, knowledge of machine
learning frameworks such as PyTorch and/or others, knowledge of performance optimizations
(such as SIMD, tuning for memory hierarchy).
“A Socio-Technical Framework for Handling Digital Evidence with Security and Privacy Assurances.”
Principal Investigator: Dr. Gokila Dorai.
Co-Principal Investigators: Dr. Gagan Agrawal and Dr. Hoda Maleki
Key Objectives: Using NLP technologies and semi-structured data management towards using developing software that responds to legal directives and retrieves relevant evidence from a device containing intermingled data.
Research Assistants Characteristics: Seeking three students for this project with knowledge and experience in programming, cryptography, a strong background in group theory, programming experience in Python/Java; mobile programming (Android/Swift); machine learning skills; natural language processing; data mining
"A Robust Framework with Rigorous Semantics and Security Guarantees for Election Day Voter Check-In"
Principal Investigator: Dr. Alex Schwarzmann.
Co-Principal Investigators: Dr. Costas Busch, Dr. Darek Kowalski and Dr. Edward Tremel
Key Objectives: To develop a rigorous scientific foundation for electronic check-in systems, providing "One voter, one vote" guarantee with security and integrity, and responsive to the requirements and needs of election officials and voters.
Research Assistants Characteristics: Several positions are available for research assistants with interest and/or background in one or more of the following areas: distributed systems, software engineering and system building, cryptography and authentication, networking and network security, data replication and consistence and fault tolerance.
CyberCorps Scholarship for Service
Principal Investigator: Dr. Michael Nowatkowski
Co-Principal Investigators: Dr. Gagan Agrawal, Dr. John Heslen, Dr. Darek Kowalski, and Dr. Alex Schwarzmann,
The Scholarship for Service program provides scholarships for up to three years of support for cybersecurity education at the graduate level for PhD students who are U.S. citizens and willing to work for the U.S. government for at least three years after obtaining their degree.
"I-CURE -- In-situ Analytics with Compressed or Summary Representations for Extreme-Scale Architectures"
Principal Investigator: Dr. Gagan Agrawal
Key Objectives: This project will make analysis of data from simulations more effective on upcoming systems for HPC using techniques such as bitmaps and associated GPU implementations.
Research Assistant Characteristics: Seeking students with prior background in parallel programming and HPC, including C/C++ programming, working in Unix environments, and knowledge of computer architectures.
"K-Way Speculation for Mapping Applications with Dependencies on Modern HPC Systems"
Principal Investigator: Dr. Gagan Agrawal
Key Objectives: This project broadly focuses on developing efficient implementations of complex/irregular applications on GPU's or other accelerators.
Research Assistant Characteristics: Seeking students with prior background in parallel programming and HPC, including C/C++ programming, working in Unix environments, and knowledge of computer architectures.
Learning-Enabled Cyber-Physical and Virtual Systems
Principal Investigators: Dr. Jason Orlosky and Dr. Weiming Xiang
Key Objectives: Dr. Xiang and Dr. Orlosky's research interests involve hardware and software tools for cyber-physical systems (CPS). They are also broadly interested in methods and applications across CPS domains, such as drone and robot control, stability analysis, augmented and virtual reality interfaces, hybrid systems, fuzzy logic, and neural networks.
Research Assistant Characteristics: Seeking students with experience in areas such as control theory and engineering, human interface design, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, and familiarity in one or more of the following: Python, Matlab, C#, and/or C++