Hicks, Shi and Graduate Student Lui Win “Best Cybersecurity Paper” Recognition from NSA

The Research Directorate of the National Security Agency (NSA) recently named a paper by Maryland Cybersecurity Center (MC2) faculty Michael Hicks and Elaine Shi, and their graduate student Chang Liu, as the winner of the NSA’s second annual "Best Scientific Cybersecurity Paper" competition.

The competition was established last year to recognize security papers that “best reflect the conduct of good science” in the field of cybersecurity.

The winning paper, “Memory Trace Oblivious Program Execution,” was presented at the 2013 IEEE Computer Security Foundations Symposium.

The panel of judges for the NSA competition—which included distinguished experts from industry, government and academia—highlighted the fact that the work from the MC2 researchers “builds a bridge between cryptographic research and information flow research” and “establishes a scientific foundation for the use of oblivious RAM.”

Hicks, Shi and Liu will be honored Sept. 18 at a ceremony, hosted by the NSA’s Director of Research, where their paper will be presented before an audience of cybersecurity experts.