McDaniel named director of Institute for Networking and Security Research
9/16/2016
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Patrick McDaniel has been named the director of the Institute for Networking and Security Research (INSR) in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
McDaniel, Distinguished Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, joined INSR shortly after his arrival to Penn State in 2004. He said that in the last 13 years the institute has evolved with the increasing impact of networking and security on the technical sector and public at large. He will provide leadership and direction to INSR, which is the focal point of security and networking research at Penn State. The institute includes world-renowned experts in cybersecurity and networking, leading the nation’s highest priority research efforts in security and network science. It has led research projects with the National Science Foundation, Army Research Laboratory Network Science Collaborative Technology Alliance and Army Research Laboratory Cyber-Security Collaborative Research Alliance that totaled more than $50 million.
“I am stepping into this role to further lead the networking and security research at Penn State,” McDaniel said. “It is important because I see the next step in INSR as building further bridges to other colleges and institutions, in order to expand the scope and impact of our research. In this way, we can shape future systems and technologies and inform the society that uses them.”
“These changes have allowed our faculty and students to pursue a vast array of topics from sensing to smartphones, and even the security of presidential elections,” McDaniel said. “I hope that the coming years will allow us to expand that broad agenda to other areas, and to extend our effort beyond the College of Engineering. This will allow us to foster interdisciplinary research that will inform and guide industry and society at large.”
Currently, McDaniel serves as program manager and lead scientist for the Cyber Security (CS) Collaborative Research Alliance (CRA), a 10-year, $48 million project aimed at establishing a new science of computer and network security for military systems and deployments around the world. The CRA is led by Penn State and includes faculty and researchers from the Army Research Laboratory; Carnegie Mellon University; Indiana University; the University of California,Davis; the University of California,Riverside; and Applied Communication Services.
McDaniel is a fellow of the IEEE and ACM, the premier professional organizations for engineering and computer science worldwide. McDaniel’s awards and honors include the Google Security and Product Safety Acknowledgement for his efforts to improve the security of Google’s Android cellular phone operating system and a 2009 Penn State Engineering Alumni Society Outstanding Research Award, and a 2008 Commendation for Exceptional Leadership and Achievement from the State of Ohio for his work in evaluating and recommending best practice in presidential elections.
In 2007, he received a National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development grant to support his investigations in bridging the theoretical and practical gaps between information security and computer programming languages.
McDaniel is a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and serves as co-director of the Systems and Internet Infrastructure Security Laboratory, the principal investigator of the CRA, and chair of the IEEE Computer Society’s Technical Committee on Security and Privacy.
He earned his doctorate in electrical engineering and computer science from the University of Michigan, his master’s degree in computer science from Ball State, and his bachelor’s degree in computer science from Ohio University.
Share this story:
Patrick McDaniel
