UT Dallas Computer Scientist Receives Prestigious Honor

UT Dallas computer scientist Bhavani Thuraisingham has received the 2010 Research Leadership Award for Outstanding and Sustained Leadership Contributions to Intelligence and Security Informatics.

Given jointly by two societies within the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the award honors Thuraisingham’s leading role in a field that integrates computer and information sciences, social sciences and management sciences to support law enforcement, counterterrorism and homeland security.

The award recognizes 20 years of research leadership, including:

  • Ten years at MITRE – a not-for-profit organization that provides information technology expertise to various government agencies – where she created research programs for both the National Security Agency and the CIA.
  • Three years at the National Science Foundation, where she directed several research programs and interagency efforts and acted as a consultant to the Health and Human Services Department’s States Bioterrorism Initiative.
  • The past six years at UT Dallas, where she leads the Cybersecurity Research Center, which has won more than $10 million in research funding in recent years.
“Since arriving at UT Dallas, Dr. Thuraisingham has expanded her research to include data mining for cybersecurity and counterterrorism applications,” said Mark W. Spong, holder of the Lars Magnus Ericsson Chair and dean of the University’s Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science. “Together with her colleagues she has established an outstanding research and education program in cybersecurity, which is an area of vital importance today.”

Announced at the recent IEEE Intelligence and Security Informatics (ISI) Conference, the award is given by the IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Society Technical Committee on ISI in Transportation Systems and by the IEEE Systems, Man and Cybernetics Society Technical Committee on Homeland Security.

Presenting the award were Dr. Uwe Glässer of Simon Fraser University, who was general chair of the ISI conference, and the University of Arizona’s Hsinchun Chen, founder of the conference. Previous recipients include Dr. John Phillips, chief scientist at the Central Intelligence Agency since 2000, and Dr. Henry Lee, a leading forensic scientist.

Thuraisingham’s latest efforts focus on developing research, infrastructure and education programs in assured cloud computing. She is a past recipient of the IEEE Computer Society’s Technical Achievement Award for her contributions to secure distributed database systems.