Kevin Fu Selected for World Economic Forum Young Scientist Award

Prof. Kevin Fu has been recognized by the World Economic Forum with its Young Scientist Award for improving the security of embedded computer systems by uncovering their security flaws.

Prof. Fu’s research is in the area of trustworthy computing and low-power embedded devices. In addition to systems security, RFID-scale computation, and energy-aware architectures, Prof. Fu’s interests include medical devices and health IT. His Security and Privacy Research (SPQR) Lab focuses on two rapidly evolving classes of computing devices: computational RFIDs and implantable medical devices. He maintains a blog on medical device security and safety.

Prof. Fu received his PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT in 2005 and joined the faculty at Michigan in January 2013. Prior to joining U-M, he was an Associate Professor of Computer Science at University of Massachusetts Amherst. He has served as a visiting scientist at the Food & Drug Administration, the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center of Harvard Medical School, and MIT CSAIL, and is a member of the NIST Information Security and Privacy Advisory Board. He previously worked for Bellcore, Cisco, HP Labs, Microsoft Research, and Holland Community Hospital. He is the recipient of a Sloan Research Fellowship, the NSF CAREER award, and best paper awards from USENIX Security, IEEE S&P, and ACM SIGCOMM. Prof. Fu was named MIT Technology Review’s TR35 Innovator of the Year in 2009 and was selected for the Federal 100 Award in 2013. He is a Senior Member of the Association for Computing Machinery.

About the World Economic Forum Young Scientists Community

Established in 2008, the Young Scientist community represents the future of science leadership, bringing together the most forward-thinking and advanced scientific minds in the world. The scientists are selected from all regions and a wide range of disciplines. Nominees are pioneers with a proven track record of advancing the frontiers of science, engineering or technology in areas of high societal impact, and are under the age of 40. During their careers, they have exhibited exceptional creativity, thought leadership and high growth potential. Emphasis is placed on individuals with a demonstrated commitment to public service, a deep interest in the global perspective and a strong alignment with the Forum’s mission of improving the state of the world. The individuals have actively engaged in playing a transformational role in integrating scientific knowledge into society for the public good. Nominees possess excellent communication skills, a collaborative attitude and an ability to translate their research for a multistakeholder audience of business, political and civil society leaders. They also demonstrate high personal standards and exceptional research ethics.