In an effort to advance and secure Utah’s emerging technology sector, the Utah Legislature has funded an initiative that partners Utah State University and Utah Valley University with leading local industry partners to produce students who are trained to anticipate both opportunities and emerging security challenges in the technology sector.
In an effort to advance and secure Utah’s emerging technology sector, the Utah Legislature has funded an initiative that partners Utah State University (USU) and Utah Valley University (UVU) with leading local industry partners to produce students who are trained to anticipate both opportunities and emerging security challenges in the technology sector.
The Deep Technology Talent Initiative (DTTI) recently awarded $5,013,900 to the Intermountain Intelligence, Industry, and Security Consortium (I3SC), a university-industry partnership led by UVU’s Center for National Security Studies and USU’s Center for Anticipatory Intelligence.
With the appropriation, the I3SC will create a multifaceted academic pipeline program available to students at both institutions. These students will obtain cross-disciplinary credentials preparing them to work in Utah’s tech sector as innovators able to think through the full range of complexity about potential security challenges.
Program offerings will be coordinated, complementary, and stackable across both UVU and USU. The areas of study include secure computing, artificial intelligence, security analytics, cybersecurity, anticipatory intelligence, and security studies.
"Our state and country face a wide range of challenges, and the need for smart, skilled, and experienced professionals is greater than ever,” said Ryan Vogel, director of the Center for National Security Studies at UVU. “The I3SC consortium between UVU, USU, and Utah industries will be a major player in preparing the workforce that can meet these challenges and help secure Utah’s emerging technology sector."
The I3SC’s key industry partners include Adobe, AgilePQ, FireEye, Fortem Technologies, Northrop Grumman, USU’s Space Dynamics Lab, and Strider. These organizations will provide students the opportunity to gain direct work experience through internships, capstones, and laboratory work in applying resilience design and industry intelligence tools.
“The next advancement in higher education requires us to play as a team,” said Jeannie Johnson, director of the Center for Anticipatory Intelligence at USU. “USU is excited to lead out alongside UVU in creating a leading-edge learning team — the I3SC consortium — that includes industry, state, and federal partners working together in unprecedented ways to prepare our graduates to be leaders in innovation, security, and resilience."
Currently, hundreds of students throughout the state are already participating in both UVU and USU’s respective programs. The consortium will increase cooperative efforts to equip students with an even broader skillset and provide a workforce to Utah companies operating in unstable global environments.
Industries are being confronted with a major rise of disruptions in many forms: from cyberattacks, often occurring with the support of adversarial foreign governments; interruption or manipulation of critical components in emerging technology development and production lines; and biological threats from another pandemic or the malicious use of biotechnology. Like the rest of society, emerging technology industries are facing threats to their supply chains and processes from natural disasters ranging from increasingly common severe drought and major wildfires to rare but potentially devastating events such as earthquakes or extreme space weather events. I3SC academic programs will equip students with the broadened perspective and skillsets to help build more resilient industries and drive innovation forward.
