The Cybersecurity Research Award is an initiative, bringing in University students and principal investigators to present their research ideas to win an award fund of USD $1.5M. This initiative will be launched during University Pavilion event at HITB⁺ CyberWeek 2019.

The grant is led by DarkMatter with Khalifa University (KU) as their strategic partner. Additionally, Dubai Electronic Security Center (DESC) will be our Advisory Partner and Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Knowledge Foundation (MBRF), University of Sharjah, Abu Dhabi Polytechnic, and NYU Abu Dhabi are our knowledge partners for this initiative. The award fund totaling to USD $1.5M will be dispersed across a period of 3 years (not exceeding USD $500,000 per year). The institution/s working on the product/idea will own the IP. However, DarkMatter will have first right to license the product/idea. List of Award conditions are included in the RFP deck (see below). Detailed terms and conditions will be shared soon.

This year’s theme for the research award will focus on Cybersecurity threats to Smart Cities and will call for innovative and original research and technology proposals that will potentially advance the field of cybersecurity for Smart Cities.

All awards will be selected by a rigorous, three-stage merit review process, and announced in May 2020. To identify which projects to support, the Cybersecurity Research Award (CRA) committee will rely on a merit review process that incorporates consideration of both the technical aspects of a proposed project and its potential to contribute more broadly to the security of Smart Cities.