Technology
UC Santa Cruz named National Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Research
The recognition highlights UC Santa Cruz’s research and educational contributions to advancing cybersecurity.
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The University of California, Santa Cruz, has been named a National Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Research (CAE-R) by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA). This recognition highlights UC Santa Cruz’s research and educational contributions to advancing cybersecurity, led by the Baskin School of Engineering.
As one of less than 100 CAE-R institutions in the country, the designation recognizes UC Santa Cruz’s demonstrated commitment to research on robust cyber defense technology, policy, and practices that will enable the nation to prevent and respond to a catastrophic event.
As a member of the CAE-R community, students and faculty can learn from and collaborate with other CAE-R institutions at workshops, symposia, and more.
“To be designated as a Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Research, UC Santa Cruz demonstrated a sustained record of cybersecurity scholarship for the past five years,” said Alvaro Cardenas, professor of computer science and engineering (CSE), who led the team completing the application process.
“We showed that, during this period of time, our graduate students have consistently published in top venues and written dissertations on security, while our faculty have continuously secured competitive federal research funding and provided leadership to the field by chairing and organizing major cybersecurity conferences, like the recent 38th IEEE Computer Security Foundations Symposium, organized in Santa Cruz by Associate Professors of CSE Owen Arden and Mohsen Lesani.”
The faculty team also included Assistant Professors of CSE Ram Sundara Raman, Ioannis Demertzis, Yuanchao Xu, and Assistant Adjunct Professor James Hughes.
Cybersecurity research at UC Santa Cruz is led by the Baskin School of Engineering, where faculty pursue research on cybersecurity in areas including data privacy, storage systems, software engineering, and cyber-physical systems.
“This is yet another important recognition of our excellence in cybersecurity education and research,” said Alexander Wolf, dean of Baskin Engineering. “Universities like ours provide invaluable input and unique perspectives on the evolving security landscape. The CAE-R designation will provide new learning experiences for our students and research collaboration opportunities for our faculty.”
Baskin Engineering students have shined at cybersecurity competitions, earning top marks at the Cyber Recon Symposium and the NSA’s codebreaker challenge. At the 2025 codebreaker event, computer engineering undergraduate student Astra Tsai was again the fastest person to solve the competition, marking her third consecutive year of accomplishing this feat. Students have also helped discover and patch real-world cybersecurity vulnerabilities as part of Slug Security, a club for students interested in hacking and cybersecurity.
In 2022, UC Santa Cruz joined the inaugural class of the U.S. Cyber Command’s Academic Engagement Network, a group of 84 colleges and universities selected to help strengthen the country’s cybersecurity operations.