Purdue CS graduate student secures X-Force Fellowship
06-06-2023
Raymond Muller, graduate student and security researcher
The 2023 NSIN X-Force Fellowship is a summer internship program that provides students a chance to serve their country by solving real-world national security problems in collaboration with the U.S. military.
Raymond Muller, a Purdue CS graduate student, has been awarded an X-Force Fellowship through the National Security Innovation Network (NSIN).
The 2023 NSIN X-Force Fellowship launched on June 5th with undergraduate and graduate students spending the summer embedded with operational military commands. These X-Force Fellows will use technical and entrepreneurial skills to deliver rapid, early-stage prototypes that help solve military mission partner problems.
As an X-Force Fellow, Muller will have the opportunity to work on a mission-focused real-world project.
“I hope to build long-lasting connections within the Department of Defense in order to fuel future research that helps to improve the nation’s capabilities,” said Muller.
As the DoD is innovating new ways to compete with private industry to attract top talent into its workforce, the X-Force Fellowship offers students an opportunity to work with the military and experience jobs in the defense innovation sector before they graduate. By building relationships between students and service members over the summer, the DoD receives ideas and solutions created in the fellowship from the nation’s greatest asset: highly talented undergraduate and graduate students.
“The work of computer scientists can contribute to and influence various industries, but national security prioritizes vital, yet often neglected issues, that are exclusive to such roles,” said Muller.
NSIN X-Force Fellows will support Department of Defense (DoD) mission partners across all branches of service by applying diverse skill sets to challenging, real-time national security projects. Each week, students meet with their military partners to identify pain points and better understand how to create feasible solutions for the DoD. Students will also attend a weekly speaker series where they will hear from professionals with experience in the public and private sector supporting the National Security Innovation Base.
“Working on real-world national security problems is uniquely fulfilling. There are extensive benefits of the work, even if not made public, which contribute significantly to ensuring people's safety."
- Raymond Muller
“Working on real-world national security problems is uniquely fulfilling,” said Muller. He added, “There are extensive benefits of the work, even if not made public, which contribute significantly to ensuring people's safety.”
Muller’s research interests cover machine learning, computer vision, and security, as well as the intersection of those topics in domains such as autonomous vehicle security. His advisor is Z. Berkay Celik, assistant professor of computer science at Purdue University. 
“This fellowship is invaluable to Raymond on two levels,” said Celik.
“First, it will allow Raymond to develop fundamental algorithms and theories that can be applied to a broad range of real-world domains, applications, and environments. This will have important implications for supporting our nation's security.”
Celik added, “Second, the fellowship will give Raymond tremendous opportunities to work directly with military and national security leaders. This will help him develop a technical skill set and an entrepreneurial mindset for supporting critical national infrastructure.”
At the end of the program, X-Force Fellows deliver and demonstrate solutions to DoD partners with guidance for further development and iteration.
About National Security Innovation Network (NSIN)
NSIN is a government program office within the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (OSD(R&E)) that collaborates with major universities and the venture community to develop solutions that drive national security innovation. We operate three portfolios of programs and services: National Service, Collaboration, and Acceleration. Together, these portfolios form a pipeline of activities and solutions that accelerate the pace of defense innovation.
About the Department of Computer Science at Purdue University
Founded in 1962, the Department of Computer Science was created to be an innovative base of knowledge in the emerging field of computing as the first degree-awarding program in the United States. The department continues to advance the computer science industry through research. US News & Reports ranks Purdue CS #20 and #16 overall in graduate and undergraduate programs respectively, seventh in cybersecurity, 10th in software engineering, 13th in programming languages, data analytics, and computer systems, and 19th in artificial intelligence. Graduates of the program are able to solve complex and challenging problems in many fields. Our consistent success in an ever-changing landscape is reflected in the record undergraduate enrollment, increased faculty hiring, innovative research projects, and the creation of new academic programs. The increasing centrality of computer science in academic disciplines and society, and new research activities - centered around data science, artificial intelligence, programming languages, theoretical computer science, machine learning, and cybersecurity - are the future focus of the department. cs.purdue.edu
Writer: Emily Kinsell, emily@purdue.edu
Sources: Raymond Muller, mullerr@purdue.edu
Z.Berkay Celik, zcelik@purdue.edu