EVERETT – Washington State University Everett is participating in a cybersecurity research program, partnered with a Swedish institute and funded by a three-year, $450,000 grant.
The first seven-student cohort from the Everett, Tri-Cities and Pullman campuses will spend their spring quarter at Sweden’s Linköping University in 2026, a press release said. The grant also allows two more cohorts in 2027 and 2028.
Students will receive a $12,000 fellowship to conduct cybersecurity research, including threat detection, artificial intelligence and privacy-protection features for systems in healthcare, self-driving vehicles and smart cities.
The initiative supports WSU Everett’s goal to prepare students for a globalized society and the multinational companies that operate in Snohomish County.
It is an opportunity for students who don’t travel much internationally to open their horizons, open their minds and embrace different cultures, WSU Everett professor Sergey Lapin said. He is a professor of mathematics and statistics and director of WSU’s Data Analytics program.
Since 2022, Joseph Iannelli, a WSU Tri-Cities professor in the School of Engineering & Applied Sciences, has led international programs across WSU campuses. Iannelli is also Director of WSU’s European Programs.
Over the last three years, Lapin saw how nervous WSU Everett students were about traveling abroad as part of Iannelli’s opportunities, he said, but were grateful when they did.
“They said, ‘I was very scared, but thank God I went because that was a life-changing experience,’” Lapin said. “I heard it a few times: ‘That was a life-changing experience.’”
So far, Iannelli’s programs have focused more on computational computer science, Lapin said. In the past three years, 25 WSU students studied at LiU through Iannelli’s initiatives.
Iannelli collaborated with Lapin on this new grant, which focuses on cybersecurity and artificial intelligence.
“There is a lot of AI in cyber right now. You can actually identify a threat by looking at patterns,” Lapin said. “[Artificial intelligence] is a big part of computer science as a global field.”
The foreign exchange opportunity complements WSU’s new cybersecurity degree, which launched in fall 2023. However, the program is not only for cybersecurity majors.
LiU is a strong STEM school in general, Lapin said. “Students with similar majors still can apply and go and learn and participate.”
The Swedish campus is very similar to WSU Everett’s, Lapin said. LiU is 40 minutes from a major city, and Sweden’s largest airplane producer resides nearby.
“They’ll participate in projects which are in Sweden. So they learn to work in teams with their Swedish counterparts,” Lapin said. “They will build networking and connections with Sweden’s biggest manufacturer of planes, which is Saab. Beyond that, probably there are some other companies in the Stockholm area.”
WSU’s partnership with the Swedish university is just one recent example of Snohomish County’s growing relationship with the Nordic country.
In August 2024, Echandia, a Swedish marine battery manufacturer, opened its first U.S. plant — and its first outside of Stockholm — at the Cascade Industrial Park in Marysville. The opening came as part of Washington state’s push for hybrid-electric ferries and other marine vessels.
“I’m proud of the role WSU Everett is playing in this international research collaboration,” WSU Everett Chancellor Paul Pitre said in the press release. “With the leadership of Dr. Joseph Iannelli in creating these opportunities and faculty like Dr. Sergey Lapin helping guide the work, we’re demonstrating that excellence in cybersecurity education lives here in Everett and across the WSU system.”
Professors Mohamed Elmahallawy and Assefaw Gebremedhin, who were collaborators on the project, were also a “fundamental part of successfully securing this funding,” Lapin said.
Applications are already open for WSU students. The school year starts Aug. 18, and the deadline to apply is Sep. 15.
Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that Professor Joseph Iannelli is WSU Pullman’s Associate Engineering Dean for International Programs. Iannelli no longer holds that position and is now the Director of WSU’s European Programs. A link to an out-of-date profile for Iannelli was also removed.
Taylor Scott Richmond: 425-339-3046; taylor.richmond@heraldnet.com; X: @BTayOkay
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