The William C. Carter Award is presented annually at the DSN Conference to recognize an individual who has made a significant contribution to the field of dependable computing through his or her graduate dissertation research.
The IEEE TC on Dependable Computing and Fault Tolerance (TCFT) and IFIP Working Group 10.4 on Dependable Computing and Fault Tolerance (WG 10.4) jointly sponsor the William C. Carter PhD Dissertation Award in Dependability. Instituted in 1997 as the William C. Carter Award, it was reformulated in 2016, where the present name and eligibility requirements aim at recognizing an individual who has made a significant contribution to the field of dependable and secure computing throughout his or her PhD dissertation.
The award commemorates the late William C. Carter, a key figure in the formation and development of the field of dependable computing. Bill Carter always took the time to encourage, mentor, and inspire newcomers to this field and this award honors and sustains this aspect of his legacy.
The award recipient receives a $750 US cash award as a contribution to travel expenses and a waived registration fee to attend the edition of the IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN) at which the award is presented. The recipient will be required to attend DSN to receive the award and is invited to give a short presentation to DSN attendees.
To be eligible for the award, the nominee's PhD defense must be completed prior to the nomination deadline and must have occurred no more than 16 months prior to the nomination deadline. Previous recipients of the (old or renamed) Carter Award are not eligible.
Romain Cayre, Eurecom-Digital security, France
PhD Dissertation title: “Offensive and defensive approaches for wireless communication
protocols security in IoT”
Defense date: June 30, 2022
Thesis Advisor: Prof. Dr. Guillaume Auriol, Prof. Vincent Nicomette, Prof. Mohamed Kaâniche
(LAAS-CNR, France)
Excerpt from the report of the selection committee: The PhD Dissertation “Offensive and defensive approaches for wireless communication protocols security in IoT” focuses on the identification, assessment, and prevention of new threats linked to the deployment of wireless communication protocols in the context of the Internet of Things. With both a theoretical and experimental approach, the thesis investigates two orthogonal research lines in IoT: i: offensive security, by identifying novel attack strategies; and ii: defensive security, by defining and validating innovative intrusion detection and prevention strategies, as well as the design of more secure communication protocols. The scientific contributions of this thesis are highly innovative and of primary relevance in the area of resilient and secure computing. They have been the subject of several scientific publications in top top-tier international peer-reviewed venues, including three publications at IEEE/IFIP DSN. The practical impact of the achieved results is highly significant, since the discovered attacks, which target major wireless protocols such as BLE and ZigBee, affect billions of IoT devices around the world. The relevance at the industry level is also noteworthy, as the tools developed within the thesis are increasingly adopted by security organizations, such as ANSSI in France.
Felicita Di Giandomenico, ISTI-CNR, Italy
Complete information on the award can be found on the award web page: http://www.dependability.org/carter-award.html