December 5, 2008 — Science Applications International Corporation has awarded five $20,000 research stipends to engineering and science students at the University of Virginia.

The SAIC Scholar Research Stipend awards are part of an ongoing alliance between SAIC, a Fortune 500 science, engineering and technology applications company, and the U.Va. School of Engineering and Applied Science.

The winners and their research projects are:
•    Ross Gore, computer science graduate student, "Understanding Unexpected Model Behavior"
•    Kristin Hagan, chemistry graduate student, "Microfluidic Purification and Amplification of RNA for Detection of Viral Hemorrhagic Fevers"
•    Rick Jones, systems engineering graduate student, "Application Layer Security in Service Oriented Architecture-based Enterprise Systems"
•    Shan Lin, computer science graduate student, "Reliable Communication in Wireless Sensor Networks"
•    Joseph Shen, systems engineering graduate student, "The Economics of Internet Security: Theoretical and Empirical Analysis"

These students also will be assigned SAIC mentors to guide completion of their research projects.

Beyond the research stipends, the SAIC alliance includes a five-year master research agreement to facilitate funding of additional student and faculty research projects. SAIC also has brought a cyber-security lecture series to the school and will provide scholarships for two of its employees to complete the Accelerated Master's Program in Systems Engineering.