Biography
Program Committee Member. Dr. Seth James Nielson is the Director of Advanced Research Projects at the Johns Hopkins University Information Security Institute (JHUISI). In this role, he is coordinating research opportunities and engagement within the University and with external partners. An important component of his work is the on-going development of JHUISI’s position as a leader in Computer Security education and research. Individually, he teaches network security courses and pursues research in various computer security topics. Dr. Nielson is also the founder and chief scientist of Crimson Vista Inc., a consulting firm with specialties in computer security, computer networking, and programming languages.
In Dr. Nielson’s early career, he focused on software engineering as a discipline, and worked for several years in start-up companies. At the same time, he pursued a research-oriented Master’s degree and published papers related to programmer cognition, and software design patterns. He then shifted his focus to topics in computer security, working as a consultant/analyst and pursuing a Ph.D. in that area. In these roles, he created hardware-accelerated cryptographic libraries, analyzed systems for security vulnerabilities, and investigated hiding traffic within P2P crowds to achieve pseudo-anonymity. Most recent projects include, leading a team of analysts in an evaluation of the security of networked medical devices, a journal paper on teaching computer security, and research into how users pick passwords.