Dr. Billy Brumley named new Endowed Professor in Cybersecurity at RIT’s ESL Global Cybersecurity Institute

Dr. Billy Brumley has been named the new Kevin O’Sullivan Endowed Professor in Cybersecurity at RIT’s ESL Global Cybersecurity Institute, contributing to the ESL GCI’s growing research profile, with his leading work in system security, cryptography engineering, and side-channel analysis. Brumley will also teach courses where he will help RIT students learn through research-based learning. The professorship was made possible by a $20 million gift from alumnus Austin McChord '09, to support cybersecurity and artificial intelligence at RIT.  

“On the teaching side, I'm very excited to offer seminar courses to RIT students, where my research-based learning will give you a taste of what a research career is like for a security scholar,” said Brumley. “On the research side, I look forward to continuing my track record of scholarly excellence through high-profile research---in collaboration with PhD students I'll recruit from the RIT student body.”

A native Texan, Brumley received his D.Sc. (Tech) from Aalto University in Helsinki, Finland in 2012. He is a former Staff Engineer for Qualcomm's Product Security Initiative (QPSI) in San Diego, California. He is also a 2018 European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant Laureate. Before joining RIT, he spent a decade as a Professor at Tampere University (Finland). 

“We are very excited to welcome Dr. Brumley to RIT and ESL GCI. His contributions to the field of cybersecurity research and open-source libraries like OpenSSL is well recognized in our community,” said Ersin Uzun, Executive Director of ESL GCI. “We look forward to working with Dr. Brumley on our aligned goals and commitment to continuously improving cybersecurity technologies and education.”