Michelle Mazurek Awarded NIST Grant for Secure Mobile App Development

Assistant Professor Dr. Michelle Mazurek was awarded a grant from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) September 1, 2015. Titled “Supporting Secure Mobile App Development”, the grant is for $333,714 over three years. Dr. Mazurek is the Principal Investigator on the grant, and the work will be done in collaboration with her students and researchers from Saarland University in Saarbrücken, Germany.

“The goal of the project is to improve security and privacy decision-making by developers of mobile applications (who are not security experts),” Professor Mazurek writes. She lists improved documentation that “…makes the 'easy' answer also a secure answer” and “[Application Programming Interfaces] designed for more security” as examples of potential efforts to improve developers' security choices.

Professor Mazurek's research focuses on computer security. Emphasizing a human factors-based approach to computer security, her research has included work on password security and access control, among other topics. She received her PhD from Carnegie Mellon University in 2014.

The department congratulates Dr. Mazurek on this exciting award!