Read MBJ’s coverage of the University of Memphis’ research efforts, and you’ll see the name Dipankar Dasgupta, Ph.D., come up quite a bit.
The William Hill professor of cybersecurity and director of the Center for Information Assurance, Dasgupta was awarded $1.01 million and $251,346 research grants from the National Security Agency (NSA) in fall 2021. And in February 2022, he was named a co-principal investigator for a project that scored a $3.8 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF).
His research covers computational intelligence, and he’s been published more than 300 times, in book chapters, journals, and international news conference proceedings. Considered one of the founding fathers of the field of artificial immune systems, he’s made major contributions that bolster digital immunity and survivable systems.
Now, Dasgupta has received a major honor — he’s been named a National Academy of Inventors (NAI) Fellow.
Established to highlight academic inventors who have created or facilitated inventions that have made a tangible impact on quality of life, economic development, and the welfare of society, the NAI Fellows program is one of the highest professional distinctions given to solely academic inventors.
Dasgupta will be one of 169 inventors inducted at the NAI’s 12th annual meeting in Washington, D.C., on June 27, 2023.
“This year’s class of NAI Fellows represents a truly outstanding caliber of inventors,” said Paul R. Sanberg, president of the NAI, in a press release. “Each of these individuals has made a significant impact through their work and are highly regarded in their respective fields."
The program has 1,567 fellows across the globe, which represent more than 300 universities and governmental and nonprofit research institutions. Combined, the fellows hold more than 53,000 issued U.S. patents, and these have led to over 13,000 licensed technologies and 3,200 companies.
Dasgupta is the third staffer from the University of Memphis to be selected for the program, as Gary Bowlin, a biomedical engineering professor, was named an NAI Fellow in 2015; and Hai Trieu, director of technology commercialization in the FedEx Institute of Technology, was named an NAI Fellow in 2019.
Dasgupta joined U of M as an assistant professor in 1997, and he was named a full professor in 2004. He is the recipient of the 2011-2012 William R. Sparks Eminent Faculty Award — the highest distinction U of M gives to its faculty — and is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
His patents on adaptive multi-factor authentication and multi-user permission models have been receiving increasing levels of attention in the IT industry, as they implement a zero-trust protocol in cyber-enabled systems.
