Brent Waters, a cryptography professor in the Department of Computer Science at UT Austin, was recently named one of IEEE’s newest fellows.
With almost half a million members, IEEE is a professional organization dedicated to advancing technology for humanity. To earn the recognition, members must nominate potential fellows. Waters joins numerous other UT Computer Science professors named as a fellow, including Peter Stone, Lili Qiu, Chandrajit Bajaj, and Inderjit Dhillon.
“It gives me a good sense of accomplishment, because being in a research career, it's more of a marathon, more than a sprint, in that you have to sustain,” Waters said. “The fact that I was able to research for a long enough time and that it's been recognized is a really nice feeling because it's a recognition for the time I put in.”
Waters was named for his contributions to the fields of cryptography and attribute-based encryption. Waters joined UT Computer Science in 2008 after receiving his Ph.D at Princeton University and completing postdoctoral work at Stanford. In 2005, he was recognized as a co-founder of Functional Encryption and Attribute-Based Encryption. The latter has been recognized as the industry standard for cyber security by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute for its efficiency and scalability since 2018.
“It feels good to be recognized by your peers… they understand what I do better than anyone else,” Waters said. “'I’m also thankful for my family, my parents, my wife, Susan—sometimes research takes away for a long time—And also my two kids there. I think having a supportive life has also been really important.”