My internship at the Department of Homeland Security

Name: Leonardo Babun

Hometown: I was born in Guantanamo, Cuba. I left Cuba in 2007 and moved to Tampa, Florida. In 2008, I relocated to Miami.

What is your major? I am working toward my doctoral degree in electrical and computer engineering under the supervision of Selcuk Uluagac, an assistant professor for FIU’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Where did you intern? What did you do there? This summer, I interned for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in Arlington, Virginia. There, I had the opportunity to work on cybersecurity and big data analytics projects. Specifically, I used different machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms to identify malicious domains on the Internet. Malicious domains are internet websites that have page layouts and web addresses that look similar to real sites. An example is chaze.com vs. chase.com. These malicious domains are frequently used to confuse the user to click on fake links to steal sensitive information, compromise their privacy or for malware download.

How did you get your internship? I had the chance to interview for this internship after a very competitive selective process in one of the job fairs offered by FIU’s CyberCorps Scholarship for Service (SFS) program. FIU’s CyberCorps SFS offers students plenty of opportunities to intern with federal government agencies, national research labs, local and state government and more. This year, I interviewed with several different agencies and labs and I received multiple offers from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), MIT Lincoln Lab, Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) and General Services Administration (GSA). Finally, I decided to accept the DHS offer.

FIU’s CyberCorps SFS is a prestigious and very competitive program funded by the NSF and co-sponsored by DHS. This program provides a full-tuition scholarship for cybersecurity education, training and professional development. I’ve been an FIU CyberCorps fellow since fall 2017.


To read the full story, visit FIU News.

Posted by Diana Hernandez-Alende