A $450,000 grant will allow Washington State University to train U.S. and Swedish students in cybersecurity research applied to artificial intelligence, or AI. 

The three-year grant from the National Science Foundation will facilitate semester-long student exchanges between WSU and Linköping University in southern Sweden beginning in the spring of 2026, according to a release.  

Applications will open this fall for interested students pursuing a cybersecurity degree at the Tri-Cities, Pullman and Everett campuses. 

“The participating students will elevate their preparation to operate successfully in the cybersecurity and AI fields at the highest international levels and expand Sweden’s and the United States’ resilience against cyberattacks from malicious agents,” Assefaw Gebremedhin, associate professor in WSU’s School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, said in a statement. 

Gebremedhin is heading up the program, with WSU Tri-Cities’ Mohamed Elmahallawy and Joseph Iannelli and WSU Everett’s Sergey Lapin as collaborators. 

WSU only began offering a cybersecurity degree in 2023 and there’s an increasing need for highly trained computer scientists to help protect companies from data theft and cyberattacks. The development of AI has only added to the challenge. 

Students accepted into the program will focus on developing security technologies that can protect AI-augmented government, industry and private cyber installations. They will also study machine learning algorithms with enhanced security, anomaly-detection and privacy-preserving features tailored for diverse systems, including health care, autonomous vehicles and smart cities. 

Conducting research in Sweden with Swedish students will give U.S. students exposure to that country’s high performance computing and visualization centers while also fostering international research and cooperation.