NSA Sponsored and Community Competitions
The Science of Security (SoS) Initiative at the National Security Agency Research Directorate sponsors several yearly competitions to encourage the use of scientific methods to investigate the nature of cybersecurity. These competitions utilize NSA's recognition as a motivation factor for researchers from high school students to experienced professionals.

The Best Scientific Cybersecurity Paper Competition is sponsored by NSA Research to promote rigorous research methods by identifying and highlighting excellence. The competition is open to all authors and nominated papers are evaluated by a panel of distinguished experts in cybersecurity. Winners are invited to NSA for recognition and to present their research. Find out more about the competition and the past winners at https://sos-vo.org/group/papercompetition

The Annual Intel International Science of Engineering Fair (ISEF) is the world’s largest international pre-college science competition with approximately 1,800 high school students from more than 75 countries, regions, and territories. The award recognizes outstanding scientific accomplishment in cybersecurity. For more information, see: https://sos-vo.org/group/ISEF

The Hot Topics in Science of Security (HoTSoS) Best Paper Award recognizes the paper that exhibits outstanding achievement in science. Papers are selected by the HoTSoS Program Committee. The winning paper is automatically nomination into the Annual Best Scientific Paper Competition. The first year for the award was 2018.
  • 2019: Integrated Data Space Randomization and Control Reconfiguration for Securing Cyber-Physical Systems by Bradley Potteiger, Zhenkai Zhang and Xenofon Koutsoukos of Vanderbilt University URL: https://cps-vo.org/node/59879
  • 2018: Robustness of Deep Autoencoder in Intrusion Detection under Adversarial Contamination by Pooria Madani and Natalija Vlajic of University of York. URL: https://cps-vo.org/hotsos18/madani