Funding

National Science Foundation

NSF Award #2327427

SaTC: CORE: Small. An evaluation framework and methodology to streamline Hardware Performance Counters as the next-generation malware detection system.

Principal investigator: Marcus Botacin.

Timeline

Continuing grant, 1 January 2024 to 31 December 2027. Estimated total: $523,415. Awardee: Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station.

The award funds the HPC Security project. It also carries a Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) supplement. The award record is on nsf.gov.

Acknowledgment text

Papers, talks and code supported by this award should acknowledge it:

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Award No. 2327427. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

"ChatGPT" for Computer Security

$150,000 grant

Started in 2025. Funds doctoral and Master's students in the lab.

Scientific partner

Laboratory of Physical Science.

A security-focused large language model built to defend against malware. Attackers can use LLMs to write malware at scale, so the project builds a small LLM that writes detection rules at scale. It reads malware signatures, identifies malware and drafts rules that analysts review, so the analyst guides the machine and the machine does the heavy lifting. The model is meant to be small enough to run on a laptop, for example during incident response, and will be released publicly. Training uses a cluster of GPUs.

Read more in the Texas A&M Engineering article, "ChatGPT" for Computer Security (Amanda Norvelle, March 11, 2025).

Other funding

Additional grants, industry gifts and fellowships can be added to this page.