Wright awarded National Science Foundation Information Technology Research grant in $12.5 million multi-institutional project

HOBOKEN, N.J. - A Stevens Institute of Technology professor of Computer Science, Dr. Rebecca Wright, is the Principal Investigator for an $808,000 grant through the Information Technology Research initiative (ITR) of the National Science Foundation. The project, titled "Sensitive Information in a Wired World," will span five years of research into the topic of sensitive information and its vulnerability to attack in a networked global environment.

"Dr. Wright is to be commended for this remarkable achievement in obtaining an ITR grant for the investigation of such an important topic," said Stevens' President Harold J. Raveche. "She also advances the recent streak of success experienced by others in our Departments of Computer Science and Electrical and Computer Engineering, in garnering major funding from the NSF for information technology and other research intiatives."

Increasing use of computers and networks in business, government, recreation, and almost all aspects of daily life has led to a proliferation of sensitive data - data that, if used improperly, can harm data subjects or other relevant parties - and concern about the ownership, control, privacy, and accuracy of these data has become a top priority.

Despite significant technical accomplishments in relevant research fields (e.g., cryptology and security, database systems, and data mining), there is no comprehensive, end-to-end technological infrastructure for handling sensitive data over the entire course of their lifetime, nor is there even widespread social agreement about the rights and responsibilities of major stakeholders in our data-intensive, networked world.

Wright's project is part of a $12.5 million multi-institutional, multi-disciplinary, multi-modal project that looks comprehensively at sensitive data in a networked world. There are four academic centers of activity in additions to Stevens: Yale, Stanford, New York University, and the University of New Mexico. There is also substantial participation by non-academic partners, including technology companies such as IBM, H-P, and Microsoft; and representatives of user communities, including Citigroup, NIH, Yale Center for Medical Informatics, the Census Bureau, and the Secret Service. Washington-based policy organizations include The Center for Democracy and Technology and The Electronic Privacy Information Center.

A major technical theme of the project is privacy-preserving data mining, and, more generally, techniques for meeting the potentially conflicting goals of respecting individual rights and allowing law enforcement and other legitimate organizations to collect and mine massive data sets. Other technical agenda items include (1) accessibility and reliability of distributed data (2) operating on encrypted databases, (3) remote control of data, (4) repelling hostile data, and (5) auditability of data-management systems. Because these technical goals are affected by lack of agreement about the meanings of basic terms, most notably "privacy," a major goal of the project is the development of a conceptual framework for the study of rights, responsibilities, and public policies focused on sensitive-data handling. This part of the project incorporates the notion of "contextual integrity," which considers both the context and the content of data sets in assessing sensitivity.

Projected outcomes of the project include a next generation of technology for handling sensitive information that is qualitatively better than the current generation's and an effective conceptual framework for policy making and philosophical inquiry into the rights and responsibilities of data subjects.

About Stevens Institute of Technology

Founded in 1870, Stevens Institute of Technology is one of the leading technological universities in the world dedicated to learning and research. Through its broad-based curricula, nurturing of creative inventiveness, and cross disciplinary research, the Institute is at the forefront of global challenges in engineering, science, and technology management. Partnerships and collaboration between, and among, business, industry, government and other universities contribute to the enriched environment of the Institute. A new model for technology commercialization in academe, known as Technogenesis®, involves external partners in launching business enterprises to create broad opportunities and shared value.

Stevens offers baccalaureates, master’s and doctoral degrees in engineering, science, computer science and management, in addition to a baccalaureate degree in the humanities and liberal arts, and in business and technology. The university has a total enrollment of 2,150 undergraduate and 3,500 graduate students, with about 250 full-time faculty. Stevens’ graduate programs have attracted international participation from China, India, Southeast Asia, Europe and Latin America. Additional information may be obtained from its web page at www.stevens.edu.  

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