IT Lab: A Summer Cybersecurity Fellowship
What is the IT Lab Cybersecurity Program?
The IT Lab: Summer Security Intensive is an all-expenses-paid, seven-week cybersecurity fellowship, offering all the experience of a cybersecurity internship, plus a $2,000 stipend and transferrable course credits. During the program, you will:
- Study with the world’s best security, analytics, and policy researchers, including the CERT division of the Software Engineering Institute
- Take three specialized courses in security analytics and policy, with the ability to transfer those credits to your undergraduate institution
- Apply knowledge, skills, and abilities gained via experiential learning to improve the cybersecurity posture of local organizations
- Visit with leading security and analytics practitioners
IT Lab Recent Projects
During the seven-week summer cybersecurity program, students will participate in a group project, fulfilling an actual business or operational need for our clients.
Students worked with USSTRATCOM subject-matter experts to research and recommend strategies to address the following policy and technical challenge problems:
- What is the role of U.S. nuclear weapons in deterring strategic or existential attacks?
- What could break deterrence in the 21st century? What could strengthen deterrence?
- What is the efficacy of multi-domain deterrence in an economically competitive environment?
- How might cyber-attacks on Nuclear Command, Control and Communications (NC3) systems introduce doubt in the reliability and effectiveness of an actor’s NC3 systems?
- Students developed a comprehensive inventory of lists, historical compilations, and trends of cybersecurity incidents.
- Students developed a comprehensive inventory of metrics used to describe cybersecurity incidents and how they are reported.
- Students developed a profile of model organizations that produce metrics/statistics today.
- Students developed an anatomy of a complex cyber incident as an exemplar use case.
- Students assisted in the development and documentation of the control/maturity framework and process indicators for the implementation of a business resiliency program aligned to the ISO 22301 Societal security—Business continuity management systems international standard.
- Students developed and deployed data analytics and visualization tools for security monitoring at Carnegie Mellon University. Deliverables included building dashboards using the ‘glass table’ functionality of Splunk for Enterprise Security.
Students conducted a feasibility study of the implementation of blockchain technologies to protect health care data with Allegheny Health Choices.
Students performed a vulnerability assessment of the technology currently used by the Consortium for Public Education. The assessment documented a technology baseline along with recommendations for a strategic plan for long-term technology investments.
Students developed a technical training curriculum for the Pittsburgh Public School District to prepare students for continuing education or entry into the Information Security workforce.
Students developed a security strategy for Pittsburgh Mercy to define organizational policy for the selection, support, and security of technology around mobile computing.
Students examined smart home automation technologies to further understand information security and data privacy risks, such as data leakage and ease of compromise. The IT Lab project team developed technical countermeasures to minimize the threat surface, providing consumers with greater control over the data their smart home is storing, processing, and transmitting.
Students developed a comprehensive written Information Security Plan that articulates and documents the organization’s administrative, technical, and physical safeguards for the protection of all information and data maintained, including information maintained on behalf of third parties. The plan recommended procedures for evaluating electronic and physical methods of accessing, collecting, storing, using, transmitting, and protecting all information and data.
Students performed a security assessment on the IT infrastructure of the organization and evaluated the security of data collected, stored, and transmitted from bionic shoes produced by the company to Nimbus Robotics data repositories.
Lunch & Learn With the Pros
In addition to IT Lab's coursework and projects, you'll meet leaders in the cybersecurity field—like Lorrie Cranor, the Director of CMU's CyLab Privacy and Security Institute.
“Students may not know they could work in the financial sector, health care, law enforcement, government, or research,” says Randy Trzeciak, the IT Lab Director. “The opportunities that CyLab and other CMU institutes can provide through the Lunch & Learn series and project opportunities are really about raising awareness, and getting students excited about areas they may never have thought about before.”
Submit a Project Proposal
Tell us about yourself and how IT Lab projects could match your interests and needs. We'll get back to you shortly to set up a chat.
IT Lab Application Checklist
Our selection committee reviews all aspects of the application, not just a student’s grades. Our goal is to attract talented students who are passionate about information security.
All of the required application materials must be received before they will be reviewed by the selection committee. Please carefully review all information for application instructions.
To be eligible to apply for admission to the IT Lab Summer Cybersecurity Fellowship, an applicant must meet ALL of the following criteria:
- Be a U.S. Citizen or Permanent Resident, 18 years or older
- Be entering their senior year, or have one semester remaining, of college in Fall 2026
- Have a cumulative undergraduate GPA of 3.2 or higher
- Have a sincere interest in cybersecurity and cyber policy
- Apply by the deadline: March 1, 2026 (11:59 pm EST)
The application form is available on our application website. Applicants should complete all required sections of the online application form.
Note: On the Program Information page, select "Summer Programs for College Undergraduates."
Please upload your responses to the following questions to the online application where the "Required Essay" is requested.
A. What are your plans after you complete your bachelor’s degree? What kind of career do you intend to pursue? Please be as specific as possible. (500-word limit)
B. How will attending the IT Lab Summer Cybersecurity Fellowship benefit you in achieving your goals? (500-word limit)
Please upload your most up-to-date professional résumé to the online application. Be sure to include all relevant experiences, including extracurricular activities, internships, research, and part-time employment.
Students applying to the IT Lab Summer Cybersecurity Fellowship must be supported by two professional or academic references. Within the online application system, the student should "register" two individuals; registration will trigger an email to be sent to each recommender with instructions on logging in to our secure system to submit an online recommendation. Recommenders may respond to questions in the online form or upload a more formal recommendation letter using the online form.
Consider asking two individuals for recommendations who can highlight your skills and accomplishments and know your work personally.
Please note: Recommendations from friends, family members or acquaintances, and other sources not able to evaluate applicants on an academic or professional basis, will not be accepted.
Within the application system, list all colleges and universities where you have taken classes that will count toward your bachelor’s degree. Please note: Transcript(s) must be in English and please ensure your name (as it appears on your application for admission to the IT Lab) is listed on the document:
Upload an unofficial copy of your transcript from your bachelor’s degree-granting institution within the online application. Please ensure that the unofficial transcript uploaded shows both the applicant's name(s) and the college/university attended. Screenshots of grades from a school's online system (i.e. Banner) will not be accepted.
If you list any additional schools attended within your application form, please upload an unofficial copy of those schools' transcripts in the appropriate field of the online application system.
Please note that this same online application system is used by applicants to our graduate degree programs; our degree programs require submission of official transcripts. Students applying for admission to the IT Lab may submit unofficial transcripts. IT Lab applicants who are offered admission may be required to submit an official transcript as part of the enrollment process.
If you decide to submit a video essay, please prepare a one-minute-long video that lets the admissions committee know who you are, what you do well, and what you are looking to achieve during a summer Fellowship at Heinz College. Please note that the video must be of you, the applicant (not a proxy). If there is more than one person in the video, please clarify which person is you, the applicant. What you do or say is totally up to you as long as you provide the information requested.
Upload the video to an easily accessible website (such as YouTube) and provide us with the URL and any required access codes in the appropriate fields within the application for admission. It is the applicant’s responsibility to correctly configure the security and access settings for the video. We recommend that the applicant use the strongest privacy settings available while still allowing access to Heinz College. If using YouTube, we suggest using the “Unlisted Video” setting so that only individuals who have the URL can view it. The applicant is also responsible for adhering to the terms and conditions of the website used to share the video essay. Following evaluation of the video essay, Heinz College will retain a short excerpt or screenshot of the video as a part of the official student record.
We are unable to watch videos that come in any form other than a URL. We will not accept videos sent by email or on DVD through the mail.
For those who will pass the first selection phase, an interview may be held in person, over the phone or via Zoom with the IT Lab’s director. The interview will focus on your expectations in the academic and professional field, your interest in the IT Lab, your background, and your personal interest in the field of information security.
Visit our online application to begin your application, continue work on your unsubmitted application, or to review your submitted application.
IT Lab Alumni Spotlight: Rachel Kang
Approaching her senior year of college, Rachel Kang took a chance.
"I loved computer science, I loved coding, but I still loved politics," Kang said. "What is a good blend between those two?"
One of her classmates at Middlebury College recommended the IT Lab program to her, and off she went to Pittsburgh for the summer cybersecurity fellowship. That experience launched her cybersecurity career; she now works for OpenAI on their Intelligence and Investigations team.
Kang spent her summer in the IT Lab working on intrusion protection and detection systems and hearing experiences from a variety of information security professionals who visited students during IT Lab’s Lunch-and-Learn sessions.
"There was one particular individual, they were the CISO at Yahoo, who came and told us a riveting story about when Yahoo got breached," Kang said. "And I just thought, 'I couldn’t believe that she got paid to do that.'"
Kang went into cybersecurity consulting after college and found the insider threat projects the most fun. “And so when this offer came in with OpenAI, I knew that I had to join,” she said. “AI was a big buzzword and there’s been a lot of push to get more security around AI, so I couldn’t pass up this perfect opportunity for me.”