Susan Landau

Susan Landau

Fellow: Awarded 2012
Field of Study: Computer Science

Competition: US & Canada

National Science Foundation; National Research Council

Susan Landau works on cybersecurity, privacy, and public policy. Over the years, Landau has advised government officials in the U.S. and Europe on security risks of various surveillance technologies, helped in the development of privacy and security policies for the Liberty federated identity management system, and helped establish Sun Microsystem’s innovative stance on digital-rights management. She testifed in 2011 for the House Judiciary Committee on the security risks in wiretapping, and in 2009 for the House Science Committee on cybersecurity activities at NIST’s Information Technology Laboratory. Currently a Visiting Scholar in Harvard’s Computer Science Department, Landau was previously a Distinguished Engineer at Sun Microsystems and held faculty positions at the University of Massachusetts and Wesleyan University. She is the author of Surveillance or Security? The Risks Posed by New Wiretapping Technologies (MIT Press, 2011) and coauthor, with Whitfield Diffie, of Privacy on the Line: The Politics of Wiretapping and Encryption (MIT Press, 1998; rev. 2007). She has written numerous computer science and public policy papers, as well as op-eds. Landau is a member of the National Research Council Computer Science and Telecommunications Board and serves on the advisory committee for the National Science Foundation’s Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering. She was a Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, is a recipient of the 2008 Women of Vision Social Impact Award, and is a Fellow of both the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Association for Computing Machinery. Landau received her B.A. from Princeton, her M.S. from Cornell, and her Ph.D. from MIT.

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