Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) researchers Jun Dai and Xiaoyan “Sherry” Sun are launching a three-year project, funded with a $600,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, that will train high school teachers across the country to teach quantum information science and cybersecurity to their students.
Xiaoyan Sun
Jun Dai
The goal of the project is to inspire and prepare young people to pursue education and careers in emerging science and technology fields.
“We want to expose high school students to these important, but sometimes challenging, topics as soon as possible,” said Dai, an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science and principal investigator (PI) on the grant. “The most effective way to do that is to provide teachers with instruction and research experiences that will prepare them to take their knowledge back to classrooms.”
Dai and Sun, also an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science, will create a program that will operate entirely online and enroll 10 high school science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) teachers per year. Over three years, Dai and Sun expect to train 30 teachers from across the United States.
Each year, participants will study independently before beginning a six-week summer session that will include instruction, an introduction to research concepts, project planning, and development of curriculum that can be implemented in schools. The teachers will participate in research exploring how artificial intelligence (AI) tools and gamification, a way of using game concepts to create learning experiences, can effectively teach students about quantum computing and cybersecurity. Dai and Sun will invite teachers who complete the program to remain connected to subsequent classes of teachers to build a community of instructors.
“We have found that training teachers is an efficient and effective way to bring knowledge, inspiration, and information to high school students,” said Sun. “When we train teachers, they convert their knowledge about highly technical topics into curriculum and lesson plans that high school students can understand and absorb. Teachers have also shown that they can do research with us, publish findings, and spread their knowledge about cybersecurity instruction to other teachers.”
The project builds on Dai and Sun’s previous work promoting cybersecurity education, workforce development, and collaboration with government, industry, and academia. They have hosted GenCyber camps, a federally funded cybersecurity teacher-training initiative, and co-implemented the National Cybersecurity Teaching Academy, which offers graduate-certificate education to high school teachers.
Dai and Sun have also collaborated on national initiatives known as DRIFT, which aims to prepare cybersecurity workers for U.S. automotive innovation on integrating cybersecurity and AI, and SWEEPS, a collaboration among institutions training software developers about secure programming issues.
Dai and Sun received their PhDs at Pennsylvania State University and joined the WPI faculty in 2023.
