Dr. Brendan Dolan-Gavitt, an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering and a faculty member with NYU’s Center for Cybersecurity, was named a recipient of a 2022 Faculty Early Career Development Award from the National Science Foundation. Known as a CAREER Award, it is given to “early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education.” Dolan-Gavitt received the award for his achievements in improving software vulnerability testing and education.

The honor comes with a five-year, $500,000 research grant. Dolan-Gavitt will use these funds to continue his work in applying artificial intelligence to the creation of synthetic vulnerabilities.  Specifically, the project employs large language models, trained on code to synthesize vulnerabilities that are both realistic and diverse. In addition, the project will enable placement of vulnerabilities in hard-to-discover paths, allow new vulnerability classes to be added quickly with a customized domain-specific language, and automatically generate exploits for each vulnerability.

This avenue of research is equally important to academia, as it provides real-world data and scenarios for use in classroom projects and cyber competitions. As an advisor to Tandon’s annual CSAW event since joining the faculty in 2015, Dolan-Gavitt  has witnessed first-hand the educational value of  its “Capture the Flag” competition.  “These types of competitions are  extremely popular and effective means of teaching a variety of cybersecurity skills, but they require large amounts of time, money, and expertise to create and manage,” he explains. “If the creation of the challenges can be partially or wholly automated, it could bring new educational opportunities within reach of a broader and more diverse population of students by dramatically lowering costs and reducing the time and effort needed.”

In receiving the 2022 award, Dolan-Gavitt joins seven of his CCS colleagues who have previously won this recognition. It also continues NYU Tandon’s strong track record in this arena, as more than half of the junior engineering faculty members at NYU Tandon have received CAREER Awards or similar young-investigator honors, including 10 since 2019.