Computer Science Faculty Member named AAAS Fellow for work in Science, Technology

Dr. Murat Kantarcioglu, professor of computer science in the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science have been elected 2020 fellow of the prestigious American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) among 489 newly elected fellows selected for their contributions to science and technology.

Since 1874, AAAS fellows have been recognized for their extraordinary achievements and include scientists, engineers and innovators who have distinguished themselves across disciplines — from research, teaching and technology, to administration in academia, industry and government, to excellence in communicating and interpreting science to the public.

Kantarcioglu was selected for distinguished contributions to the field of secure and privacy-preserving data storage, querying and mining, and adversarial machine learning. His research focuses on creating technologies that can efficiently extract useful information from any data without sacrificing privacy or security. Recently, he has addressed blockchain software, sharing of pandemic-related patient data and secure use of videoconferencing software.

Kantarcioglu, who joined the UT Dallas faculty in 2005, has published more than 100 papers in peer-reviewed journals and conferences. His research has been supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) — from which he received a Faculty Early Career Development award in 2009 — the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the Office of Naval Research, the National Security Agency and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

He is director of the UT Dallas Data Security and Privacy Lab, a distinguished scientist of Association for Computing Machinery and a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

“Over the years, I have worked on a broad range of collaborative research projects, aiming to ensure secure and privacy-preserving data storage, querying, sharing and analysis,” Kantarcioglu said. “As a computer scientist whose research agenda is at the interface of cybersecurity, machine learning and data science, I believe that addressing the emerging challenges in data privacy and security is impossible without transcending the conventional disciplinary boundaries and advancing new synergistic initiatives in data science. I am glad to see that my research contributions in data security and privacy are honored with this important recognition.”