NSF awards grant to ACCURATE

The National Science Foundation (NSF) expects to make 36 new awards totaling $36 million through its 2005 Cyber Trust program. The awards, ranging from $200,000 to $7.5 million, include two new centers—one focused on the design and technology for trustworthy voting systems and the other on securing electric power grids.

Cyber Trust, the centerpiece of NSF’s cybersecurity efforts, is based on a vision of society in which the computers and networks underlying national infrastructures, as well as in homes and offices, can be relied upon to work—even in the face of cyber attacks.

To build more trustworthy voting systems, Johns Hopkins University’s Avi Rubin will lead “A Center for Correct, Usable, Reliable, Auditable and Transparent Elections” (ACCURATE). A collaborative project involving six institutions, ACCURATE will investigate software architectures, tamper-resistant hardware, cryptographic protocols and verification systems as applied to electronic voting systems. Additionally, ACCURATE will examine system usability and how public policy, in combination with technology, can better safeguard voting nationwide. The center’s research and findings will also apply to other systems where end-to-end security is paramount.

The full NSF press release is available on their web site.

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