Research Projects

The TU Cyber Center supports educators and researchers across Towson University working towards finding solutions to cybersecurity problems and integrating the knowledge gained to enrich students’ educational experience. 

Our faculty and students work with academic, government and industry partners on multidisciplinary, cutting-edge cybersecurity research projects. Cyber research at TU has been funded through grants from public and private organizations, including the National Science Foundation, National Security Agency, Department of Defense, and the Army Research Lab.

Cybersecurity Research at Towson University

Election Security

Towson University College of Business & Economics associate professor Natalie Scala and Josh Dehlinger, a professor in the Department of Computer and Information Sciences, conduct research on election security, including developing and deploying educational modules to help train election judges and increase the security of the State of Maryland’s voting process. They recently co-authored a study that shows mail-in voting is secure and does not jeopardize the safety of the U.S. elections process.

Cyber-Physical Networks and Security

  • Wei Yu — Computer and Information Sciences
  • Chao Lu — Computer and Information Sciences
  • Weixian Liao — Computer and Information Sciences

Profs. Yu, Lu, and Liao lead a research lab working to advance research and education in the areas of Internet of Things/Cyber-Physical Systems, Computer Networks, Security, Data Analytics, and Machine Learning. These research efforts have been supported by federal and state agencies, including NSF, NSA and University System of Maryland (USM), and have received the NSF Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award, the University System of Maryland (USM) Regents’ Faculty Award for Excellence in Research/Scholarship/Creative Activity and best paper awards from IEEE international conferences. Approximately 30 doctoral students have worked in the research lab and twelve students have joined academic institutes as tenure-track faculty members. 

Identifying Software Defects and Security Vulnerabilities using Machine Learning Techniques

CIS Professors Deng, Dehlinger, and Chakraborty are conducting research on reducing security vulnerabilities and software defects, an increasing threat in cyberspace. This project develops a machine-learning based system, trained with known software defects and security vulnerabilities. The system is expected to assist software developers, testers and cybersecurity analysts discover defects and vulnerabilities in software.

Digital Forensics

This work aims to develop a Cloud-based Cyber Investigation Case Simulator (CCICS) for enhancing students’ learning experience in digital forensics, provide a contextual-based online-learning environment by mimicking well-known real-world scenarios with malicious acts and the corresponding cyber investigations, and to investigate modern approaches for mobile and IoT forensics. Collaborating with the University of Baltimore, this project received two external grants from the Department of Justice. Focusing on investigating new mobile and IoT forensics, we have successfully designed novel approaches to aid digital forensic analysis on Android, iOS, drones, and intelligent vacuum robots, aiming to help local and national law enforcement agencies in their work.

Cybersecurity Learning Sciences

Towson University is a national leader in cybersecurity education and workforce development. TU heads the NSA NCAE-C Curriculum Task Force, which is chartered to identify emerging high-need areas in cyber and develop curriculum to help faculty build a cyber-prepared workforce.

The CLARK project, which includes a digital library developed at Towson, hosts the largest collection of free cybersecurity curricula.

Secure Coding in Introductory Programming Courses

The Security Injections@Towson project designed modules for incorporating secure coding in early programming classes. Security injections include lab exercises and checklists that teach secure coding concepts, including integer error and input validation across a variety of languages. These self-graded modules have helped hundreds of educators teach students to “Code Responsibly.”

Cybersecurity Diversity Pipeline

Secure Programming Logic Aimed at High school (SPLASH) offers an introductory programming logic class to high-school girls. This program is designed to prepare students for undergraduate programming classes and help increase interest in cybersecurity and computer science.