Meet the 2018 Women in Cybersecurity Scholarship Winners

Morphisec is pleased to announce the 2018 winners of the Morphisec Women in Cybersecurity Scholarship. The program offers three scholarships for female students enrolled in cybersecurity-related studies to support and encourage young women exploring a career in this field. In addition to the cash awards, the first place winner receives a personal mentoring session.

Inbar Oz received first prize for her discussion on the integration of cybersecurity with medical data analytics. Inbar is a second year student at Tel Aviv University with a dual major in computer science and biology. Before that she served as an officer in the famed 8200 intelligence unit of the IDF where she led a cyber threat intelligence team of analysts, data miners and translators and managed threat intelligence response for real time cyber events.

“I'm truly thankful for receiving this award from Morphisec,” said Inbar. “For me, cybersecurity is all about solving puzzles. Being involved in the security world demands studying new technologies and methods every day and I enjoy taking part in this continuous race towards an advanced and safer world. The Morphisec scholarship is a great encouragement to keep exploring and studying the computer science and cyber security fields.”

Second prize was awarded to Megan Morton, an undergraduate student of cybersecurity at University of West Florida. Megan began as a computer science major, but soon switched to cybersecurity after taking a class on the subject at the recommendation of her academic advisor. Her career interests are focused primarily on penetration testing and malware analysis.

The third scholarship went to Noa Yehezkel, a Bar Ilan University master’s candidate in computer science, focusing on artificial intelligence. One of her areas of research has been in improving robustness of neural networks to avoid adversarial attacks. Noa graduated in electrical engineering summa cum laude from the Technion and is involved in promoting science education in Israel focusing on women in STEM.

The three winners were by no means the only impressive applicants. The scholarship committee was overwhelmed with the number of capable young women entering the cybersecurity field. If they are any indication to go by, the industry is headed for a much needed influx of diverse talent.

Final determinations were made by independent judge Limor Elhayani, Vice President of Threat Engineering at Citi. Limor is a strong proponent of the need to increase the representation of women in technology and is involved with several organizations promoting that goal.

“I have been the only woman in the room for most of my professional life but this is not a true reflection of the potential and talent in our society,” said Limor. “I want to help bring more women into technology companies and increase diversity that will drive a change in the organizational culture and biases. Morphisec’s scholarship program is a step in the right direction.”

Congratulations to our three scholarship winners and thank you to all who applied!