Prof. Frank Xu Receives Over $1M in Grant Funding to Support the Growth of Computer Forensics and Digital Evidence Education in Maryland
March 24, 2021
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Frank Xu, associate professor in The University of Baltimore's School of Criminal Justice and director of the M.S. in Forensic Science-Cyber Investigations program, will use three new grant awards for projects aimed at helping to meet the increasing digital forensics workforce need in Maryland:
- The University of Baltimore was one of two leading institutions (the other being Purdue University) selected by the Bureau of Justice Assistance to participate in the Student Computer Forensics and Digital Evidence (CFDE) Educational Opportunities Program, an innovative new program that seeks to further educational opportunities for students in the fields of computer forensics and digital evidence. This practical and academic program will better prepare students for employment within federal, state, local, territorial, and tribal law enforcement agencies that are charged with the prevention, investigation, and response to economic, cyber, and high-tech crimes. Prof. Xu, along with colleagues Debra Stanley, executive director of the School of Criminal Justice, and Melvin de la Cruz, assistant professor, are the principal investigators on this project and will use a $900,000 grant to develop real-world case studies to achieve this goal over three years. Towson University is a sub-award institute of the grant.
- In a second project, Prof. Xu, serving as the principal investigator, has received a $300,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to explore visualized and explainable artificial intelligence (AI) to improve students' learning experience in digital forensics education. Specifically, the project will leverage graph-based inductive AI models to provide students visualized forensic evidence, the patterns of evidence, and the connections among the evidence, explore explainable AI to support accountable and presentable forensic evidence to courts, and investigate AI graph-based transfer learning to develop AI-aid CFDE instructional materials. The project brings together faculty from The University of Baltimore, Bowie State University, and the University of Missouri-Kansas City, who have synergistic expertise in digital forensics, cybersecurity, and AI.
- Prof. Xu is one of nine faculty members from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate's (S&T) Minority Serving Institutions (MSI) programs across the United States selected to receive funding to continue their Summer Research Team (SRT) research projects at one of several DHS S&T Centers of Excellence. According to S&T, the SRT program "aims to integrate the unique intellectual capital of the nation's MSI community with DHS's scientific leadership in order to enhance and inspire the next generation of homeland security thought leaders, helping to build a cadre of university students and faculty who are well-qualified, diverse and ready to enter the homeland security science and engineering workforce." Prof. Xu will use the $80,000 grant award to continue his research project, "Developing a Shared Cyber Forensic Intelligence Repository for Collaborative Cybercrime Analysis," at The Criminal Investigations and Network Analysis Center, an academic consortium led by George Mason University.
Learn more about Prof. Xu and UBalt's School of Criminal Justice.