Nasreen Mir and Anushka Khare have been selected as this year’s winners of ESET Canada’s Second Annual Women in Cybersecurity Scholarship.
The Annual Women in Cybersecurity Scholarship awards $5,000 to an exceptional graduate/undergraduate woman majoring in a STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) field of study to assist address the underrepresentation of women in the cybersecurity sector. This year, ESET Canada increased the number of winners to two.
Nasreen Mir of Mississauga, Ontario, is a recent high school graduate who hopes to enrol at Queen’s University in the fall to pursue a Bachelor of Computing degree. Nasreen formed a Girls Cybersecurity Club to recruit and inspire her female peers to learn more about cybersecurity and compete in the National Girls Go CyberStart competition, in addition to maintaining strong academic standards throughout her high school career.
“Providing girls like myself a chance to gain skills in a growing area that could assist them in the future has been a highlight,” says Mir. “My goal is to drive progress in the world by building applications that are inclusive and cater to everyone, not just majority groups. I also want to work on services that already exist to increase security while also making them more inclusive.”
Anushka Khare, from Calgary, Alberta, is pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering in her third year at the University of Alberta. Anushka has committed her free time to applying her computer engineering talents and expertise for the improvement of society, focusing on problems that most affect her peers. She is a recipient of the University of Alberta Deans Research Award, co-president of the STEM Fellowship, co-founder of a peer-to-peer rental start-up, and designer of an app that helps enhance the technology used by Alzheimer’s sufferers.
“A sense of passion to solve the problems around me has driven me to pursue an education in STEM. ” says Khare. “My business learnings have allowed me to develop a keen awareness to the importance of cybersecurity when evaluating the vulnerabilities that protrude during the development of my online business and other application productions. I want to contribute to the community around me by solving challenges and building connections whether that is through applications, my volunteering commitments, or sharing my knowledge with others.
“Anushka and Nasreen’s submissions reflect the values we were looking for when selecting our candidates. Not only do they have a passion for STEM and cybersecurity, they’re already embodying what it is to be a conduit of progress in a world of technology,” said Celeste Blodgett, vice president of human resources at ESET. “We received a number of impressive and highly qualified applicants this year, and at the end of the day, the winners’ confidence, passion for the sciences, and their ability to turn dreams into reality is what solidified the selection process.”
Applicants were required to write an essay and submit a recommendation letter. Here’s where you can learn more about the qualification procedure. Students can study cybersecurity at 47 colleges and institutions across Canada.
To learn more go to www.eset.com/ca
