Wenliang (Kevin) Du, the Laura J. and L. Douglas Meredith Professor in electrical engineering and computer science, has been recognized as a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) for his contributions to cybersecurity education and research.  

The ACM is the world’s largest society of computing professionals, and their member grade recognizes the top 1% of ACM members worldwide for their groundbreaking contributions to computing and information technology. All 2023 inductees have been well-established ACM members who were chosen by their peers.  

Du has been at Syracuse University since 2001 and his research focuses on computer and network security. He founded the SEED open-source project in 2002 and the cybersecurity lab exercises developed from this project are now being used by 1,100 institutes worldwide. Additionally, his self-published book, “Computer & Internet Security: A Hands-on Approach”, has been adopted by 280 institutes worldwide. His research papers have been cited 17,800 times, and he has won two Test-of-Time Awards. Du was also elevated to a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in 2023.

“This very prestigious award means a lot to me, as it recognizes over 20 years’ of my work on cybersecurity education and research, especially my work on cybersecurity education,” says Du. “I was told by many friends not to spend too much time on the education part, as it won’t help my tenure case – I am glad that I didn’t listen to them. Now the global impact of my work on cybersecurity education is huge.”