Charles Clancy, director of the Ted and Karyn Hume Center for National Security and professor of electrical and computer engineering in the College of Engineering at Virginia Tech, has been named Bradley Distinguished Professor in Cybersecurity by the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors.

The Bradley Distinguished Professor in Cybersecurity recognizes faculty excellence. Recipients hold the professorship for five years and it is renewable.

Clancy has built a distinguished career through his pioneering research in the fields of communications security, cognitive radio, and cryptographic authentication, and broader impact to the university’s growth of programs in cybersecurity.

Since joining Virginia Tech in 2010, Clancy launched the Hume Center for National Security and Technology with 35 academic faculty, 40 research faculty, and 10 staff engaging more than 400 students each year. He has also served as the leading force behind the Integrated Security Destination Area and the Commonwealth Cyber Initiative, which have the opportunity to further accelerate Virginia Tech security-related programs.

Clancy has a consistent record of research funding and impact. Over the past 20 years he has made major contributions to wireless authentication, software-defined and cognitive radio security, 4G/LTE security, and currently 5G/IoT security. He has authored and coauthored 63 publications in peer-reviewed journals and 144 papers in peer-reviewed conferences. He holds 10 issued U.S. utility patents. 

He has served as the principal investigator or co-principal investigator on $52 million in externally funded projects, and has launched four university spin-off companies that have raised more than $120 million in venture capital.

Clancy has supervised and graduated 12 doctoral and 25 master’s degree students and has trained and hosted three postdoctoral fellows that have each gone on to tenure-track positions in academia. He currently supervises eight doctoral and three master’s degree students.

He received the Virginia Tech Dean’s Award for Excellence in Research in 2014.

Clancy has chaired and served as security advisor to several working groups in the Internet Engineering Task Force and is co-author to six published Internet Standards. He currently serves on the steering group for the WInnForum Spectrum Sharing Committee, developing standards for use of 3.5 GHz spectrum, and chaired the security working group that negotiated a partnership between the U.S. Department of Defense and wireless industry for how to securely access this Navy radar spectrum. 

He has previously served on the editorial boards of Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Transactions on Cognitive Communications and Networking and IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security. 

He is serving as general chair for the IEEE International Conference on Communications and Network Security, the flagship security conference for the IEEE Communications Society, to be held in Washington D.C. in June 2019. 

His expertise in wireless security has also led to three invitations to testify at hearings on Capitol Hill since 2017 on the topics of 4G/5G security, rogue cell towers, and telecommunications supply chain security. He serves as a key advisor to CTIA, the primary industry group for the U.S. wireless sector, as they engage with the FCC and other stakeholders on cybersecurity regulation.

Clancy received his bachelor’s degree from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, a master’s degree from the University of Illinois, and a doctoral degree from the University of Maryland.

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