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Student Fellows

Student Fellows

CACR Student Fellowship Program

"For any student considering this fellowship:

What you gain here goes far beyond a line on your resume. You get real work with real stakes, mentorship that lifts you up, and a community that genuinely invests in your growth. I can say without a doubt that I am not the same person I was before I joined CACR.”

- Dhwanit Samir Pandya, 2025 CACR Student Fellow

The CACR Student Fellows Program is currently on hiatus for the 2026–27 academic year. Please check back here for any future updates regarding the program.

Through the CACR student fellowship program, leading cybersecurity experts at Indiana University present graduate students with opportunities to gain new and valuable skills, on-the-job experiences, and exposure to tools used in protecting critical information and systems.

CACR student fellows are at the forefront of client work, conducting cyber assessments and operations research, and finding ways to increase automation. Every student fellow is paired with a CACR staff mentor and contributes directly to CACR’s active projects, programs, and initiatives over the course of a year-long appointment.

Prior to applying, closely review the information below.

If you have questions, contact cacr@iu.edu with the subject line "Question regarding the CACR Student Fellowship Program."

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Program Details

Student fellow appointments are for one year, beginning at the start of the fall semester and ending before the beginning of the subsequent fall semester, with an option to include the intervening summer term. Onboarding activities will begin in the two weeks prior to or following the start of the fall semester depending on student and staff availability.

During the spring semester each year, we will announce the deadline for applicants wishing to be considered for that fall’s cohort. While we plan to align the start of each cohort with the beginning of the academic year, we are accepting applications year-round.

CACR takes a highly collaborative and multi-disciplinary approach to addressing cybersecurity challenges. Therefore, students from all disciplines and schools are encouraged to apply.

Meet our alumni

Learn about the meaningful work our former fellows contributed to at CACR and discover where their experiences have taken them next.

2025 Student Fellows

Madelyn Gamble

Madelyn worked with the Army Cyber Institute to help build two foundational cybersecurity resources: a stakeholder identification methodology and a general-purpose decision-making tool grounded in the Information Security Practice Principles.

Dhwanit Samir Pandya

Dhwanit contributed to applying AI for security log analysis to reduce dwell time and accelerate triage, and supported efforts to advance the secure use of AI for the research community through a blog post on industry AI frameworks and mapping controls to the Musts of the Trusted CI Framework.

Sharlene Toney

Sharlene worked with SecureMyResearch to develop content for and refine the student-centered SecureMyFutureResearch Canvas course with a focus on applying the Information Security Practice Principles to each step in the research lifecycle.

2024 Student Fellows

Ben Lazarine

Ben worked on a project related to his dissertation research with Rob Templeman and explored uses of LLMs and knowledge graphs to aid cybersecurity assessors.

Kate Naughton

Kate supported SecureMyResearch by developing a student-focused cybersecurity training course and conducting a market analysis of IU Bloomington’s academic programs to inform future outreach.

Mohammad Nasir Moradi

Nasir focused on Windows Event Log security analysis and also contributed to developing detection rules for identifying PII in Google Documents.

Tanner Wilburn

Tanner led key efforts for the US Army’s Jack Voltaic Program, and was an integral part in running Cyber Table Top exercises at West Point and CYBER YANKEE, one of the Department of Defense’s largest annual cyber events.