The Information Networking Institute (INI)

Interested in applying to the INI for Spring 2027? Come join us for our next Virtual Guide to Applying! A member of our admissions team will walk you through building your strongest application and answer your questions in real time.

Attend this session and we’ll waive your $75 application fee. Register at the link in the comments below!

Applications open July 1st!

Virtual Guide to Applying: Starting Your Application

Tuesday, June 30th

9:30AM-11:30AM ET

Congratulations to our M.S. in Information Technology - Information Security (MSIT-IS) student who defended their thesis this past semester!

Jihu Hwang: Securing Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) with Trusted Ex*****on Environments: A security-Utility Trade-off Analysis

The application for Spring 2027 opens July 1! Whether you're starting your grad school research or already planning to apply, attend our virtual information session to chat with our admissions team and ask any questions.

If you register and attend this session, we'll waive your application fee ($75)! This waiver will be automatically applied when you start an application. We hope to see you there!

Virtual Information Session

Wednesday, June 17

10-11 a.m. ET

TBT: Did you know that our third international program was in Portugal? In 2007, we launched two programs: M.S. in Information Networking in Aveiro and M.S. in Information Technology - Information Security in Lisbon.

And one year later, we hosted the first global orientation, Destination 2008, and brought together students from all six of our global locations to meet and connect with their classmates here in Pittsburgh.

For our 2026 INI Diploma Ceremony, Aditi Pendhakar shared some inspiring words with our 36th graduating class as our Keynote Speaker. Pendhakar is a 2009 Alum and current Principal at Amazon Web Services (AWS).

She concluded her keynote with an inspirational quote from poet Sir Muhammad Iqbal: “You are an eagle — your purpose is to soar; there are many more skies ahead of you.”

Thank you, Aditi!

“The INI gave me the rigor and the environment to go deep. The real test is applying that foundation to systems where performance, security, reliability and business requirements all matter at once."

This spring, Carnegie Mellon University held the 31st Parallel Data Lab Workshop and Retreat, bringing together researchers, students and industry professionals working at the frontiers of storage systems, databases and large-scale computing.

In attendance was INI alum Vikramraj Sitpal, a graduate of M.S. in information Networking (MSIN) and current senior development manager in Oracle’s Database organization. He shared how his INI experience helped him in his role.

Carnegie Mellon University has the winningest team in MITREcorp eCTF history with five consecutive wins, and we are so proud to have so many INI students and faculty involved, including Hanan Hibshi and Patrick Tague.

Reflecting on the strength of the team, Hibshi said: “We bring together students from different disciplines, and that diversity of expertise really matters."

Congratulations!

We're proud to celebrate the graduation award winners of the MS36 class:

Shyamal Vaderia — Outstanding Student Service Award for a Teaching Assistant

Neelesh Bisht — Outstanding Student Service Award for a Research Assistant

Logan Shea O'Brien — INI Leadership Award

Danielle Wicklund — Innocent Habiyaremye Memorial Award

Each of these winners represents the INI core values and has contributed meaningfully to our culture of inclusive excellence. Congratulations!

It's been just over a month since our Director Dr. Dena Haritos Tsamitis gave the keynote address at the CAE Community Symposium in downtown Pittsburgh.

Thanks to our colleagues from across the country who traveled to the city of bridges to share ideas, build community and forge new collaborations for the future of our cybersecurity "neighborhood." We're proud to be your neighbor!

To continue our series on this year's thesis and research-based projects, we wanted to congratulate our M.S. in Mobile and IoT Engineering (MSMITE) grads for completing their defenses. Students who chose the Advanced study option and select to pursue a project or thesis conclude their work with a defense held in their final semester and share their work with students, faculty and staff.

This year, one MSMITE student successfully defended their work:

Qingzheng Wang: Towards Robust Spoken Language Identification