Short Bio
Dr. Sean Peisert is a senior scientist at at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where he leads computer security research and development. He is also both a full adjunct professor of Computer Science at the University of California, Davis and of Health Informatics at the University of California, Davis School of Medicine. He is also Deputy Director and Co-PI of Trusted CI, the NSF Cybersecurity Center of Excellence.
His research and development interests cover a broad cross section of usable and useful computer security and privacy solutions, particularly in enabling secure and privacy-preserving scientific data analysis, and improving security in high-performance computing systems, and other research cyberinfrastructure, and power grid control systems.
Professor Peisert is editor-in-chief of IEEE Security & Privacy; a member of the Distinguished Expert Review Panel for the NSA Annual Best Scientific Cybersecurity Paper Competition; a member of the DARPA Information Science and Technology (ISAT) Study Group; an ACSA Senior Fellow; a steering committee member and past general chair of the New Security Paradigms Workshop (NSPW); steering committee member and past program co-chair of the USENIX Workshop on Cyber Security Experimentation and Test (CSET); past chair of the IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Security & Privacy; and a steering committee member and past general chair for the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, the flagship conference for security research.
He was previously chief cybersecurity strategist for CENIC where he was responsible for cybersecurity strategy and implementation for CENIC's enterprise as well as for CalREN, a high-capacity network designed to meet the unique requirements of CENIC's constituent population of over 10,000 institutions and 20 million users.
In 2007, he was honored as a Research Fellow by the Institute for Information Infrastructure Protection, funded by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and in 2014, his work received an award from the Director of Science and Technology for the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).
He received his Ph.D., Masters, and Bachelors degrees in Computer Science from UC San Diego. He is an ACM Distinguished Member
Long Bio
Dr. Sean Peisert is a senior scientist at at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where he leads computer security research and development. He is both a full adjunct professor of Computer Science at the University of California, Davis and of Health Informatics at the University of California, Davis School of Medicine. He is also Deputy Director and Co-PI of Trusted CI, the NSF Cybersecurity Center of Excellence.
His research and development interests cover a broad cross section of usable and useful computer security and privacy solutions, particularly in enabling secure and privacy-preserving scientific data analysis, and improving security in high-performance computing systems,
and other research cyberinfrastructure, and power grid control systems.
Highlights of the R&D that he has led include
development of definitions and R&D roadmaps for hardware/software co-design of future HPC systems, high-throughput networks, and networked scientific instruments to build cybersecurity in by design, leading directly to HPC cybersecurity elements of DOE funding solicitations and which has been central to NIST HPC Security working group;
development of secure computation architectures optimized for scientific computing to ensure trustworthiness of scientific data from the edge to the HPC center;
development and application of differential privacy to power grid and vehicle mobility data and applications, the latter intended for operational deployment by DOE CESER;
inventing means to identify misuse of high-performance and cloud computing systems;
developing the first practical approaches to integrate physics of operational technology in the power grid with intrusion detection to ensure their secure operation, now broadly used in applied R&D efforts globally, and appearing in DOE funding solicitations and Congressional budget appropriations;
and leading codification of the “Medical Science DMZ” — a network design pattern for enabling secure, high-volume, high-throughput transfer of sensitive data subject to compliance requirements, such as HIPAA or CUI, now used by companies and research institutions globally, including the NSF Global Research Platform.
At Trusted CI, he co-led the Open Science Cyber Risk Profile (OSCRP) working group — a cross-disciplinary group of computer security professionals and scientific researchers that worked to develop a document designed to help research cyberinfrastructure operators understand cyber risks, The OSCRP is now a recommended reference in all NSF CICI solicitations since 2018 and the NSF Research Infrastructure Guide (RIG) (21-107, Dec. 2021). He has also led studies into scientific data integrity, scientific data confidentiality, software assurance in science, the security of operational technology in science, and building security into maritime and polar NSF Major Facilities by design. The latter is directly impacting design, construction, and operations of the California Coastal Research Vessel, the NSF Regional Class Research Vessels, U.S. Antarctic Program’s $1B icebreaker, and Ocean Observatory Initiatives’ replacement of hundreds of underwater autonomous vehicles.
He was previously chief cybersecurity strategist for CENIC where he was responsible for cybersecurity strategy and implementation for CENIC's enterprise as well as for CalREN, a high-capacity network designed to meet the unique requirements of CENIC's constituent population of over 10,000 institutions and 20 million users.
In 2007, he was honored as a Research Fellow by the Institute for Information Infrastructure Protection, funded by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and in 2014, his work received an award from the Director of Science and Technology for the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) for scientific and technical merit.
He has taught university courses in security for health informatics, computer forensics, “insider” threats, and critical systems; advised numerous graduate students; has published more than 125 peer-reviewed papers, invited articles, book chapters, and technical reports; and has given over 100 invited talks and tutorials in a variety of venues.
He is actively involved with the computer security community, as well as communities to which he studies, develops, and applies computer security techniques, including medical and public policy organizations, and other organizations operating critical infrastructure. He works closely with private industry, and was a member of the Cybersecurity Research and Development Advisory Committee for the California Joint Utility Program, “California Energy Systems for the 21st Century (CES-21),” a $35M, ratepayer-funded effort.
He has led numerous cybersecurity-related working groups, including co-leading the 2012 Dagstuhl Seminar on Organizational Processes for Supporting Sustainable Security examining issues surrounding insider threats; and leading two workshops in 2015 for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research to establish key needs and directions for a high-performance computing cybersecurity research and development program, culminating in the development of recommendations for hardware/software co-design of future high-performance computing systems to build cybersecurity for data-intensive, scientific computing in from the outset. He also led formation of the DOE Integrated Joint Cybersecurity Coordination Center (iJC3) Cyber R&D Enterprise Cybersecurity Capability (ECC) — an R&D effort composed of 10 DOE National Labs.
In addition to his work in computer security, he spent several years as a Senior Fellow at the San Diego Supercomputer Center working in areas of high-performance computing, compilers, and source code optimization.
Professor Peisert is editor-in-chief of IEEE Security & Privacy; a member of the Distinguished Expert Review Panel for the NSA Annual Best Scientific Cybersecurity Paper Competition; a member of the DARPA Information Science and Technology (ISAT) Study Group; an ACSA Senior Fellow; a steering committee member and past general chair of the New Security Paradigms Workshop (NSPW); steering committee member and past program co-chair of the USENIX Workshop on Cyber Security Experimentation and Test (CSET);
past program chair of the Workshop on Learning from Authoritative Security Experiment Results (LASER); and past chair of the IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Security & Privacy; and a steering committee member and past general chair for the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, the flagship conference for security research.
Previously, Dr. Peisert was an I3P Research Fellow, was a computer security researcher at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), and was a Senior Fellow in the Berkeley Institute for Data Science at UC Berkeley. He received his Ph.D., Masters, and Bachelors degrees in Computer Science from UC San Diego. He is an ACM Distinguished Member
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