This proposal supports 12 students for their travel to attend the 16th Workshop on the Economics of Information Security (WEIS) held at the University of California San Diego, on June 26-27, 2017. WEIS is an annual event that serves as a leading forum for interdisciplinary scholarship on information security, combining expertise from the fields of computer science and electrical engineering, economics, social science, business, law, and policy. Student participation in WEIS is a critical part of the educational experiences of students with interdisciplinary interests related to security and privacy. WEIS provides them an opportunity to interact with senior researchers and to be exposed to leading work in the field. As such, it fits closely with the goals of NSF's Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC) program, which include socio-economic approaches to information security.
August's research broadly spans information systems and operations management with current interests in the economics of network software, production and service management, pricing and policy associated with network goods, and the interaction of digital piracy and security risk. Currently, he is investigating the control of information security risk using economic incentives.
August has co-founded two information technology start-up companies and worked in research and development and operations for the Clorox Company. He has consulted for Honeywell, GlaxoSmithKline, Herbalife and Time Warner Cable.
He received a 2010 National Science Foundation CAREER award. It will provide $530,000 in research funding and was granted by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering, under the Trustworthy Computing program.
August received his Ph.D. in the field of operations, information & technology from the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University in 2007.
NSF Student Travel Grant for 2017 Workshop on the Economics of Information Security (WEIS)