Texas State, Department of Education offer GAANN Fellowships for computer science doctoral students

Staff Reports

SAN MARCOS – The Department of Computer Science at Texas State University has received a grant from the U.S. Department of Education’s Graduate Assistance in Areas of National Need (GAANN) program to support Ph.D. students in computer science.

The $570,000 federal grant will support five doctoral students of superior ability who demonstrate financial need towards their doctoral studies in artificial intelligence and cybersecurity. An additional doctoral student will be supported by $135,000 institutional matching funds. Vangelis Metsis, associate professor in the Department of Computer Science, will oversee the program.

“We are very excited to have received this fellowship opportunity from the U.S. Department of Education. It will enable us to attract and train excellent doctoral candidates in areas of national need,” Metsis said. “As a minority-serving institution, we will make every effort to recruit underrepresented minorities to this program.”

Each GAANN fellow will receive three years of federal fellowship support and up to two years of departmental support. The fellowship includes a supervised teaching training component that will provide GAANN fellows with experience which they may choose to leverage in pursuit of an academic career.

Texas State’s computer science doctoral students have achieved great success in publishing their work in leading conferences and journals. The newly designed doctoral curriculum incorporates not only traditional aspects of teaching and research training but also modern marketable skills, including leadership, entrepreneurship and communication. GAANN fellows will have the opportunity to participate in a variety of supervised research and teaching experiences designed to ensure their successful training in the proposed areas of national need.

Consideration for a GAANN fellowship is open to any U.S. citizen or permanent resident, with outstanding academic performance, who plans to pursue a Ph.D. degree in computer science at Texas State. The GAANN program at Texas State employs an array of strategies to maximize the recruitment and retention of underrepresented minority students, and it features a comprehensive multi-tiered evaluation plan to ensure the continuous improvement of the program and the success of graduates.

Recruitment of students from traditionally underrepresented groups is intended to boost the participation by students from these groups in the computer science doctoral program and encourage their selection of academic careers.

For more information, visit https://cs.txstate.edu/news/detail/807/.