TU professor’s cybersecurity excellence nets major award

Wei Yu also earned a 2015 USM Regents’ faculty award for excellence

By Megan Bradshaw on July 28, 2016

Achievement awards are becoming an annual occurrence for Dr. Wei Yu. The Jess & Mildred Fisher College of Science and Mathematics associate professor of computer science received the prestigious University System of Maryland (USM) Wilson H. Elkins Professorship on July 19.

Wei Yu head shot
Associate Professor Wei Yu

Through the professorship, Yu will lead a team of students in addressing critical security issues for modern cyber-physical transportation systems. The team aims to develop novel techniques to secure transportation systems, produce a theoretical framework to explore attacks and investigate cyber threats, and suggest countermeasures to mitigate those attacks.

Winner of the 2015 USM Regents’ Faculty Award for Excellence in Scholarship, Research or Creative Activity and the 2012 Fisher College of Science and Mathematics’ Excellence in Scholarship award, Yu has also earned a prestigious National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award of nearly half a million dollars over five years. He has received more than $1.7 million extramural funding for research as principle investigator (PI) and over $2.3 million of additional extramural funding as a co-PI since joining the TU faculty in 2009.

Yu’s work in smart grid, transportation, and other critical infrastructure security strengthens TU’s nationally recognized cyber security programs, which have resulted in a designation by the National Security Administration (NSA) as a Center of Academic Excellence in Cyber Operations – one of just 14 in the nation.

The professorship was established in 1978 to honor Wilson H. Elkins, a former Rhodes Scholar and president of the University of Maryland. Candidates for the professorship must possess a solid record of achievement in one’s academic or professional discipline; a demonstrated desire and ability to lead and inspire undergraduate and graduate students in the full range of learning situations, from lectures to student-teacher discussions; evidence of significant achievement beyond one’s traditional discipline, but with a scholarly and professional relationship to the academic enterprise at USM; and a demonstrated ability and intent to pursue scholarly or professional endeavors beyond the USM.