Susan Landau is an American mathematician, engineer, cybersecurity policy expert, and Bridge Professor in Cybersecurity and Policy at the

Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy is the graduate school of international affairs of Tufts University, in Medford, Massachusetts. The School is one of America's oldest graduate schools of international relations and is well-ranked in it ...

Tufts University Tufts University is a private research university on the border of Medford and Somerville, Massachusetts. It was founded in 1852 as Tufts College by Christian universalists who sought to provide a nonsectarian institution of higher learning. ...

. and She previously worked as a Senior Staff Privacy Analyst at

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

. She was a

Guggenheim Fellow Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the a ...

and a visiting scholar at the Computer Science Department,

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

in 2012.

Career

Landau is an alumna of Bronx Science and the

Hampshire College Summer Studies in Mathematics Hampshire (, ; abbreviated to Hants) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in western South East England on the coast of the English Channel. Home to two major English cities on its south coast, Southampton and Portsmouth, Hampshire is ...

. She then graduated with an A.B. in mathematics from

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...

in 1976 after completing a senior thesis titled "Simple algebras", under the supervision of

John Coleman Moore John Coleman Moore (May 27, 1923 – January 1, 2016) was an American mathematician. The Borel−Moore homology and Eilenberg–Moore spectral sequence are named after him. Early life and education Moore was born in 1923 in Staten Island, New ...

. She went on to received a master's degree from

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to tea ...

in 1979 before pursuing graduate studies at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

, where she received a

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...

in mathematics in 1983 after completing a doctoral dissertation, titled "On computing

Galois group In mathematics, in the area of abstract algebra known as Galois theory, the Galois group of a certain type of field extension is a specific group associated with the field extension. The study of field extensions and their relationship to the po ...

s and its application to solvability by radicals", under the supervision of Gary L. Miller. In 2010–2011, she was a Fellow at the

Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University—also known as the Harvard Radcliffe Institute—is a part of Harvard University that fosters interdisciplinary research across the humanities, sciences, social sciences, arts, a ...

at Harvard, where she investigated issues involving security of government systems, and their privacy and policy implications. From 1999 until 2010, she specialized in

internet security Internet security is a branch of computer security. It encompasses the Internet, browser security, web site security, and network security as it applies to other applications or operating systems as a whole. Its objective is to establish rules ...

at Sun Microsystems. In 1989, she introduced the first

algorithm In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific problems or to perform a computation. Algorithms are used as specifications for performing ...

for deciding which nested radicals can be denested, which is known as Landau's algorithm. In 1972, her project on odd

perfect number In number theory, a perfect number is a positive integer that is equal to the sum of its positive divisors, excluding the number itself. For instance, 6 has divisors 1, 2 and 3 (excluding itself), and 1 + 2 + 3 = 6, so 6 is a perfect number. ...

s won a finalist position in the

Westinghouse Science Talent Search Westinghouse may refer to: Businesses Current companies *Westinghouse Electric Corporation, the company that manages the Westinghouse brand, with licensees: **Westinghouse Electric Company, providing nuclear power-related services ** Westingho ...

. Outside of her technical work, she is interested in the issues of

women in science The presence of women in science spans the earliest times of the history of science wherein they have made significant contributions. Historians with an interest in gender and science have researched the scientific endeavors and accomplishments ...

, maintaining the ResearcHers Email list, a "community dedicated to supporting women new to research in computing", and an online bibliography of women's writing in computer science. She was awarded the 2008 Anita Borg Institute Women of Vision Award for Social Impact. She has been a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science since 1999, and in 2011 she was inducted as a

Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery A fellow is a concept whose exact meaning depends on context. In learned or professional societies, it refers to a privileged member who is specially elected in recognition of their work and achievements. Within the context of higher education ...

. In 2012, Landau won the Surveillance Studies Network Book Prize for her book
Surveillance or Security? The Risks Posed by New Wiretapping Technologies
', published by

MIT Press The MIT Press is a university press affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts (United States). It was established in 1962. History The MIT Press traces its origins back to 1926 when MIT publish ...

. In October 2015, Landau was inducted into the National Cyber Security Hall of Fame.

Involvement with FBI v. Apple case

Landau gave testimony in the

FBI–Apple encryption dispute The FBI–Apple encryption dispute concerns whether and to what extent courts in the United States can compel manufacturers to assist in unlocking cell phones whose data are cryptographically protected. There is much debate over public access ...

between 2015 and 2016. She is the co-author of “Keys Under Doormats: Mandating Insecurity by Requiring Government Access to All Data and Communications,” which received the 201
J. D. Falk Award
from the Messaging Malware Mobile Anti-Abuse Working Group. The Obama administration gave substantial credit to this report's analysis when it announced that it would not pursue exceptional access to phone data. Landau testified that making iPhones less secure would simply send terrorists and bad actors running toward options that the FBI and Congress had no control over. Compelling Apple to weaken its software would "weaken us, but not impact the bad guys."

Notes

References

* Susan Landau, "How to Tangle with a Nested Radical", ''

The Mathematical Intelligencer ''The Mathematical Intelligencer'' is a mathematical journal published by Springer Verlag that aims at a conversational and scholarly tone, rather than the technical and specialist tone more common among academic journals. Volumes are released qu ...

'', volume 16, number 2 (Spring 1994), pages 49–55. * Susan Landau, in "In Her Own Words: Six Mathematicians Comment on Their Lives and Careers" ''

Notices of the American Mathematical Society ''Notices of the American Mathematical Society'' is the membership journal of the American Mathematical Society (AMS), published monthly except for the combined June/July issue. The first volume appeared in 1953. Each issue of the magazine since ...

'' 38:7:702–706 (Sept. 1991
full text at the Association for Women in Mathematics
(written in 1988) * Abelson, Harold; Anderson, Ross; Bellovin, Steven M.; Benaloh, Josh; Blaze, Matt; Diffie, Whitfield; Gilmore, John; Green, Matthew; Landau, Susan; Neumann, Peter G.; Rivest, Ronald L.; Schiller, Jeffrey I.; Schneier, Bruce; Specter, Michael; Weitzner, Daniel J.,
Keys Under Doormats: Mandating insecurity by requiring government access to all data and communications
(July 6, 2015)

External links

Susan Landau
– Susan Landau's webpage, with pointers to most of her publications
Internet Eavesdropping: A Brave New World of Wiretapping
– Article by Landau {{DEFAULTSORT:Landau, Susan American computer scientists Computer security academics American women computer scientists 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians American women mathematicians Living people Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery The Bronx High School of Science alumni Sun Microsystems people 1954 births Princeton University alumni Cornell University alumni Massachusetts Institute of Technology School of Science alumni Radcliffe fellows Google employees Worcester Polytechnic Institute faculty 20th-century women mathematicians 21st-century women mathematicians Mathematicians from New York (state) 20th-century American women 21st-century American women