ARCHIVED PAGE - This page is archived and being provided for historical reference.


The Distributed Analytics and Security Institute (DASI) has merged into The Center for Cyber Innovation (CCI). The CCI website is available at www.cci.msstate.edu.

MSU Reaffirmed as Cyber Research Center of Excellence

May 28, 2014

Federal officials have reaffirmed Mississippi State University as a leading institution for cyber security education and research.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the National Security Agency have recertified the university as a National Center of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance Research. The designation is valid through 2021. The designation comes after extensive work by faculty in the departments of computer science and engineering, electrical and computer engineering, and management and information systems.

David A. Dampier, a professor of computer science and engineering at Mississippi State and also director of the Distributed Analytics and Security Institute (DASI), led the effort. DASI is part of the High Performance Computing Collaboratory at Mississippi State located in the Thad Cochran Research, Technology and Economic Development Park.

In addition to Dampier, the Mississippi State team which worked to attain recertification included, from computer science and engineering, Wesley McGrew and Mahalingam Ramkumar; from electrical and computer engineering, Tommy Morris; and from management and information systems, Robert Crossler and Merrill Warkentin.

The university also holds national Center of Academic Excellence (CAE) designations in cyber operations and in information assurance education. Mississippi State is the only institution of higher education in the state to attain all three designations. The CAE program was started in 1999 to reduce the vulnerability of the nation's cyber and network infrastructure by promoting information assurance in higher education and producing more graduates with the background and expertise in computer science and cyber defense disciplines.

The university's cyber security capabilities include four dedicated research centers: the Center for Computer Security Research, the National Forensics Training Center, the Critical Infrastructure Protection Center, and the Distributed Analytics and Security Institute.

To view the full article, please see: Mississippi State University News.