Tam Vu, assistant professor in computer science and engineering, is the recipient of a Google Research Award, a one-year award to support the work of faculty at top universities around the world. According to the Google award website, “The intent of the Google Research Awards is to support cutting-edge research in computer science, engineering and related fields, including public policies, geographical maps, economics and market algorithms.”

This award fosters the collaboration between Google and the Mobile and Networked System Lab in Department of Computer Science, and it will support an ongoing project called “One Ring To Rule Them All,” which aims at providing a ubiquitous solution for user identification and authentication through a novel communication technique called Capacitive Touchscreen Communication. This method exploits the pervasive capacitive touchscreens found in today’s electronic devices such as laptops, phones, etc., as a receiver for decoding identification and authentication information transmitted from custom-designed human wearable hardware tokens, such as a ring or a watch. The end goal is to unify all forms of authentication tokens, including credit cards, phone SIM cards, car keys, etc, into a single ring.

Congratulations, Tam!

The list of previously awarded faculties can be found here.