Symantec will award Symantec Research Labs (SRL) Graduate Fellowships to outstanding Ph.D. students who meet the eligibility criteria listed below. A key goal of the program is to fund innovative research that has real-world value, in areas where Symantec conducts business. We are soliciting applications for the following areas:

  • Privacy and Identity: Applied and novel cryptographic schemes and other techniques for privacy and identity-protection objectives such as authorization, verifiable claims, trust, anonymity, ubiquitous and usable encryption, and privacy-preserving analytics with strong guarantees.
  • Security: Achieve security objectives for systems, networks, mobile devices, internet of things, data centers and cloud, through such mechanisms as trusted hardware, secure programming languages, security by design, threat and malware characterization, and auditing and deception techniques.
  • Machine learning and data mining: Scalable methods such as graph and time-series analyses, anomaly detection, natural language processing, online learning, and distributed model training, in support of the security and systems areas mentioned above, as well as robustness, interpretability, privacy, and accountability of ML systems.
  • Human Factors: Applications of psychology, sociology, anthropology, behavioral economics, human-computer interaction, linguistics, and other human sciences to security and privacy. These include use of technology for social good, effective privacy, security, and identity theft notifications, and both human-assisted AI and AI-assisted humans.

Award Provisions

The SRL Graduate Fellowship provides up to $20,000 that may be used to cover one year of the student’s tuition fees and to reimburse expenses incurred by the student to engage into research collaboration with Symantec, such as conference registration fees, travel expenses, hardware, etc. If the fellowship is to cover tuition, this portion of the award will be made through the university.

A second component of the award is a salaried internship with Symantec that we plan to offer to all fellowship recipients.  Interns will usually work directly with Symantec Research Labs at one of our locations (Culver City, CA, USA; Mountain View, CA, USA; Dublin, Ireland; Sophia-Antipolis, France) or with another group within Symantec.

Each recipient is paired with a mentor from Symantec. A mentor is a top researcher or engineer who can provide ongoing technical guidance on the recipient’s research during graduate training as well as during an internship at Symantec.

Eligibility

  • Applying students must be enrolled in a Ph.D. program.
  • Preference will be given to students with a desire to work in an industrial research lab and those working on innovative research projects in areas related to Symantec’s businesses and interests.
  • Recipients will also be selected based on their overall potential for research excellence and their academic progress to date as evidenced by publications.

Application Materials

  • Resume or C.V.
  • Personal statement of research interests not to exceed 750 words. Applicants are strongly encouraged to articulate the value and novelty of their research.
  • Two letters of recommendation from professors or industry researchers who can evaluate the applicant’s scientific aptitude and potential for research.  Letters of recommendation may be sent separately and confidentially.

The application is due December 4, 2019, 5 p.m. PST. For more information, visit the Symantec website.