School gets $4.6 million for cybersecurity
FAYETTEVILLE -- A $4.63 million, five-year National Science Foundation grant will support cybersecurity training for undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.
The grant provides money for UA faculty to develop a curriculum focusing on electric power grid security.
Students from underrepresented groups will be recruited for the training, with the university also partnering with Northwest Arkansas Community College "to open paths for its students" to pursue degrees from UA as part of the effort, according to UA's announcement of the grant.
The training -- which also includes government internships -- will be led by UA's Arkansas Security Research and Education Institute.
Jia Di, the institute's director, said in a statement that "new cybersecurity challenges are met with an increasingly insufficient security workforce."
The White House under President Donald Trump in September issued a National Cyber Strategy that includes developing "a superior" cybersecurity workforce.
A Congressional Research Service report from September stated there have been "increasing reports about foreign hackers targeting the U.S. electric power system," though "these intrusions have not been reported as having resulted in significant disruptions."
UAMS program keys on entrepreneurship
FAYETTEVILLE -- A new entrepreneurship program at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences will partner post-doctoral trainees in Little Rock with teams of UA-Fayetteville business students to bring ideas to the marketplace.
The first four trainees in the two-year program's first cohort will be paid $50,000 to $55,000 annually through National Institutes of Health grant money received by the UAMS Translational Research Institute, said Leslie Taylor, UAMS vice chancellor for communications and marketing.
The trainees -- Samir Jenkins, Astha Malhotra, Melody Penning and Aaron Storey -- have health-science research interests that include nanomaterials and 3-D printing. The 15-credit Health Science Innovation & Entrepreneurship program has trainees taking UA-Fayetteville distance education courses and working with Master of Business Administration students.
At medical schools, "there aren't a huge number of these entrepreneurship programs, and I think Arkansas is doing the right thing and getting in on the early stage of this," said Ross McKinney, chief scientific officer for the Association of American Medical Colleges.
Taylor said UAMS will retain some commercialization rights, per the university's policies.
McKinney said that while schools may have "something of a profit motive" with such programs, it's also "good for the institution's reputation to be seen as innovating and making a difference in patient care."
$59.7 million in bonds issued for projects
FAYETTEVILLE -- Bonds with a value of about $59.7 million will help finance University of Arkansas, Fayetteville projects and also refund previously issued bonds from 2009, according to a preliminary statement dated Wednesday.
The statement, available to investors online through publisher MuniOS, notes that the value of the bonds may change.
Uses for the bonds include $30 million to finance campus projects that include renovations to the third- and fourth-levels of Mullins Library, constructing intramural sports facilities, building what UA calls a 75,000-square-foot Student Success Center that includes new areas for tutoring and mentoring, and a chilled water plant project.
The refunding part involves using some of the bond sale proceeds to pay principal and interest on the 2009 bonds.
NW News on 07/21/2019