Innovation and Impact in Cyber Security

Farnam Jahanian serves as Provost and Chief Academic Officer at Carnegie Mellon University. Prior to CMU, Jahanian led the National Science Foundation Directorate for the Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) from 2011 to 2014. With the annual budget of over $900 million, he was responsible for directing CISE’s research programs and cyber infrastructure initiatives. During his tenure at NSF, the CISE Directorate led several administration initiatives in collaboration with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, including the National Robotics Initiative, the National Big Data Research and Development Initiative and US Ignite. Jahanian was on the faculty in the College of Engineering at the University of Michigan (UM) from 1993 to 2014, where served as Chair for Computer Science and Engineering from 2007 to 2011 and the Director of the Software Systems Laboratory from 1997 to 2000. His work on Internet routing stability and security led to the formation of Arbor Networks, a network security company he co-founded in 2001. During a three-year leave from UM, he led the management team of the company and raised over $33 million in two rounds of funding from venture capital firms and strategic investors. He remained as Chairman of Arbor Networks until its acquisition in 2010. Jahanian’s research interests span distributed computing, Internet security and network protocols and architectures. The author of over 100 research papers, Jahanian has served on dozens of national advisory boards and continues to be an active advocate for how basic research can be uniquely central to an innovation ecosystem that drives global competitiveness and addresses societal priorities. Jahanian holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Austin.