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SAN ANTONIO, April 25 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Baker College of Flint, Michigan, Texas A&M University and University of Louisville took first, second and third place honors in the 3rd annual National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (NCCDC) held April 18-20 at the Airport Hilton Hotel in San Antonio. The winning team received an invitation from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to attend the Cyber Storm III National Cyber Security Exercise in Washington, D.C.
“We’ve competed in these collegiate cyber defense competitions for the last three years and have never made it passed the regional level,” said Brandon Hladysh, Baker College team captain. “I’m really proud of my teammates and they truly are the best of the best.”
Closing ceremonies included an awards presentation and keynote address from Cornelius Tate, the newly appointed director of the Department of Homeland Security’s National Cyber Security Division (NCSD). According to Tate, NCSD’s primary focus is working on preventing a cyber version of 9/11 by ensuring that all systems of either a federal or critical infrastructure nature are being protected appropriately. Tate does not want to see a situation arise in which they are not able to operate due to a malicious attack, natural disaster or other incident that is of a catastrophic nature.
The competition, hosted by The University of Texas at San Antonio’s Center for Infrastructure Assurance and Security (CIAS), a nationally recognized leader in cyber security education and research, featured six eight-member teams that were scored on their ability to operate and maintain a business network while under hostile cyber attack.
The CCDC program has grown from five participating schools in 2005 to 56 schools in 2008 with six regional competitions taking place nationwide. The 2008 national competition featured Baker College of Flint, Michigan, Texas A&M University, University of Louisville, Rochester Institute of Technology, the Community College of Baltimore County and Mt. San Antonio College. The participants advanced to the National CCDC after winning regional competitions against opposing teams in the Southwest, Midwest, Mid-Atlantic, Southeast and West Coast Regions.
The CCDC program is the first cyber defense competition allowing teams of full-time collegiate students from across the country to apply their information assurance and technology education in a competitive environment. While similar to other cyber defense competitions, CCDC competitions are unique because they focus on business operations and incorporate the operational aspect of managing and protecting an existing network infrastructure. The teams inherited an “operational” network from a fictional business complete with e-mail, Web sites, data files, and users.
Each team was required to correct problems on their network, perform typical business tasks, and defend their networks from a red team that generated live, hostile activity throughout the competition. The teams were scored on their performance in those three areas and the team with the highest score at the end of the competition was crowned the National Collegiate Cyber Defense Champion.
The CCDC program is sponsored in part through donations from leading businesses in the communications and information technology industries. Donated hardware and software from leaders in the IT industry was used during the competition to provide students with the opportunity to work with technologies they would never see in a typical classroom environment.
“For the first time, we had two, two-year colleges win their region and compete, so it was exciting to see them competing against the four year universities,” said Gregory White, Director of UTSA’s CIAS. “We’ve had three national competitions with winners representing three different regions, so it’s good to see that there’s bright, sharp, computer security savvy individuals all over this country.”
The National CCDC is being sponsored in part through donations and volunteer support from the AT&T Foundation (), Department of Homeland Security (), Cisco Systems (), Acronis (), Northrop Grumman (), Accenture (), the Information Systems Security Association (), Core Security (), ThinkGeek (), Code Magazine (), and Pepsi ().
For more information please visit or contact the CIAS at 210-458-2118 or via email at .
Center for Infrastructure Assurance and Security

TAIPEI, Taiwan, April 27 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Universities in Taiwan are ranked amongst the top one percent of research institutions from around the world over a period of five years from January 2003 to December 2007. According to data derived from the (1)Essential Science Indicators(SM) (ESI) database of the Scientific business of Thomson Reuters, at least one Taiwan institution is ranked among the world’s top 100 in five of 22 categories, namely Agricultural Science, Chemistry, Engineering, Materials Science, and Pharmacology & Toxicology. Engineering and Materials Science were two fields in which more than one Taiwan university was represented within the top 100.
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Essential Science Indicators is a bi-monthly compilation of the (2)Web of Science(R), the world’s most authoritative citation database used at more than 3,500 research institutions around the world and in more than 40 countries. Derived from ISI Web of Science and monitored in Essential Science Indicators, this ranking of Taiwan universities allows for variations and changes of university names to be managed in a consistent manner. The ranking is based on each institution’s research output in high-standard international scholarly journals and is considered as evidence of their academic excellence. This approach differs from that used in other university rankings, most of which are consolidated based on multiple aspects of university research and education using both objective and subjective criteria.
The ranking derived from ESI below shows up to five Taiwan universities that appeared in each of the five categories along with their world standing. Ranking of the universities is based on the total number of citations of their published research papers from January 2003 to December 2007.
Average
cites
Taiwan World per
rank rank Institution Cities Papers paper

Agricultural Science
1 82 National Taiwan University 774 260 2.98
2 104 National Chungsing University 652 256 2.55
3 299 National Taiwan Ocean University 200 95 2.11

Chemistry
1 85 National Taiwan University 8377 1905 4.4
2 143 National Tsing Hua University 6071 1279 4.75
3 269 National Cheng Kung University 3928 1035 3.8
4 327 National Chiao Tung University 3155 733 4.3
5 365 National Sun Yat-sen University 2811 720 3.9

Engineering
1 51 National Taiwan University 3089 1718 1.8
2 52 National Cheng Kung University 3085 1832 1.68
3 69 National Chiao Tung University 2775 1673 61.6
4 146 National Tsing Hua University 1627 1013 1.61
5 235 National Central University 1112 650 1.71

Materials Science
1 37 National Tsing Hua University 3347 883 3.79
2 52 National Taiwan University 2740 819 3.35
3 53 National Cheng Kung University 2726 1154 2.36
4 98 National Chiao Tung University 1835 496 3.7
5 221 National Central University 991 282 3.51

Pharmacology & Toxicology
1 61 National Taiwan University 1638 334 4.9
2 135 Taipei Medical University 1122 226 4.96
3 237 National Yang Ming University 711 164 4.34

In summary with the collating of all 22 categories, the top 10 Taiwan universities appear as follows:
All Fields
Average
cites
Taiwan World per
rank rank Institution Cities Papers paper
1 171 National Taiwan University 53,185 14,623 3.64
2 372 National Cheng Kung University 24,162 8,463 2.86
3 467 National Tsing Hua University 18,514 5,649 3.28
4 507 National Yang Ming University 16,459 3,680 4.47
5 584 National Chiao Tung University 14,057 5,929 2.37
6 737 National Central University 10,251 3,488 2.94
7 766 National Sun Yat-sen University 9,651 3,721 2.59
8 808 Chang Gung University 8,926 2,847 3.14
9 881 National Chungsing University 7,760 3,177 2.44
10 890 Kaohsiung Medical University 7,617 2,257 3.37

“The ranking result derived from ESI reflects the citation impact of Taiwan universities which has been growing significantly these past five years,” said Mr. Mark Garlinghouse, Vice President, Asia Pacific for the Scientific business of Thomson Reuters. “Methodological consistency is important to maintain statistical validity, especially for research evaluation. Since 2001, Scientific has been applying consistent methodology in ESI and continuously improving its quality. As the leading global provider of authoritative information to research communities, we are committed to ensuring the integrity of our information in research evaluation and supporting the local research community with value-added resources such as informed and balanced analysis to help them evaluate their academic positioning.”
Ms. Nobuko Miyairi, Senior Information Analyst for the Scientific business of Thomson Reuters, commented, “When interpreting these university rankings, it is important to consider the size of the universities as well as the research focus in their academic pursuit. Universities with a large number of researchers, such as National Taiwan University and National Cheng Kung University, tend to dominate these rankings if ranking is based on the number of papers published or citations received as a total. National Chiao Tung University, National Tsing Hua University and National Central University compete with these two biggest institutions in physical science and applied sciences.”
She added, “A strong focus in certain disciplines will give some universities an advantage in specific fields such as Pharmacology & Toxicology in the case of Taipei Medical University and National Yang Ming University. University administrators and evaluators are encouraged to consider not only domestic rankings but also the world ranking of their institutions, and the time-series change in these rankings to assess their academic progress as part of their strategic decision making process.”
The Scientific business of Thomson Reuters provides information and knowledge to accelerate research, discovery and innovation. Our authoritative, accurate and timely information is essential for drug companies to discover new drugs and get them to market faster; researchers to find relevant papers and know what’s newly published in their subject; and businesses to optimize their intellectual property and find competitive intelligence. We create the research platforms and services of the future that will power our customers toward business and personal success. For more information, visit scientific.thomsonreuters.com.
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NOTES TO EDITOR: (1)Essential Science Indicators (SM) (ESI) is a resource that enables researchers to conduct ongoing, quantitative analyses of research performance and track trends in science. Covering a multidisciplinary selection of more than 11,000 journals from around the world, this in-depth analytical tool offers data for ranking scientists, institutions, countries, and journals. This unique and comprehensive compilation of science performance statistics and science trends data is based on journal article publication counts and citation data from Scientific databases. Available as a 10-year rolling file, ESI covers 10 million articles in 22 specific fields of research, and is updated every two months.
(2)The Web of Science(R) provides seamless access to current and retrospective multidisciplinary information from nearly 10,000 of the most prestigious, high impact research journals in the world. Web of Science also provides a unique search method, cited reference searching. With it, users can navigate forward, backward, and through the literature, searching all disciplines and time spans to uncover all the information relevant to their research. Users can also navigate to electronic full-text journal articles.

Thomson Reuters