Polo Chau, a doctoral candidate in the Machine Learning Department, is one of three recipients this year of the Symantec Research Labs Graduate Fellowship, awarded to promising graduate students with a demonstrated interest in solving real-world information security, storage and systems management problems.

Chau's research combines the fields of machine learning and human-computer interaction to create visual and interactive graph mining systems that help analysts keep pace with emerging threats by identifying and specifying anomalous patterns and instructing a system to detect them. He was also a recipient of the Symantec Research Labs Graduate Fellowship awarded in June 2008. His research efforts as an intern contributed to the development of Symantec's innovative reputation-based approach to malware detection.

The one-year fellowship covers 100 percent of tuition and fees, along with a competitive stipend to fund ongoing research in their respective areas of expertise. The two other recipients announced by Symantec are from Penn State and the University of California, Santa Barbara. All three will be paired with mentors at Symantec and will have research access to the Symantec Global Intelligence Network, a threat-sensing network.

"The Symantec Research Labs Graduate Fellowship program is currently in its third year and has played a strong role in our efforts to continuously generate innovative solutions to today's challenges," said Darren Shou, senior manager, Symantec Research Labs University Research Program. "We received a large number of superb applicants and this year it was quite challenging to make our final selections. This latest group of student researchers represent some of the most promising students in their fields."