Farinaz Koushanfar named ACM Fellow for contributions to secure computing.
Farinaz Koushanfar, professor and Henry Booker Faculty Scholar in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of California San Diego, has been named one of 57 Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) for 2022. Koushanfar is recognized for her contributions to secure computing and privacy-preserving machine learning. She directs the Adaptive Computing and Embedded Systems (ACES) Lab at UC San Diego and is the founding co-director of the Machine-Intelligence, Computing and Security Center (MICS).
Koushanfar’s research has resulted in widely-used software and tens of patents filed in the United States and worldwide. Her inventions ensure security of digital integrated circuits (ICs) and their software/data, robustness of AI models and privacy-preserving computation. She is an inventor of the first-ever methodology for actively and uniquely locking, tracking and controlling each IC post fabrication, as well as the first hardware accelerator for safe deep learning robust to adversarial samples, the first AI accelerator robust to data poisoning and the first deep learning watermarking method that is simultaneously robust to several classes of prior-known vulnerabilities.
Koushanfar has received several awards and honors including being listed in 2008 MIT Technology Review (TR-35) among the world’s top 35 innovators under the age of 35, 2010 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers from President Obama, 2019 elevation to the rank of fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Computer Engineers, and the Ten Year Retrospective Most Influential Paper Award at the 2017 International Conference on Computer Aided Design.
The ACM Fellows program recognizes the top 1% of ACM Members for their outstanding accomplishments in computing and information technology and outstanding service to ACM and the larger computing community. Koushanfar now joins a diverse 2022 class of ACM Fellows representing research centers, universities and private corporations based in ten different nations around the world.
Farinaz Koushanfar is a pioneering researcher in the field of computing whose work has had a profound impact on security, privacy and AI. Her original contributions to the field have resulted in widely-used software, tens of patents and several awards and honors. She has been recognized as one of 57 Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery for 2022 for her outstanding accomplishments in computing and information technology and service to ACM and the larger computing community. Koushanfar is an eminent supporter of women and minorities and has been the lead of several DEI initiatives, making her a role model for the wider computing community.
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