UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — In recognition of his research in the field of cybersecurity, Patrick McDaniel, the William L. Weiss Chair in Information and Communications Technology in the Penn State School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, has been awarded the Outstanding Innovation Award from the Special Interest Group on Security, Audit and Control of the Association for Computing Machinery. 

According to the organization, the award is given to outstanding individuals for their innovative technical contributions to computer and communications security. 

“It is truly an honor to be recognized by the security community as having meaningful and lasting impact on the technical community,” McDaniel said. “I am pretty humbled.”

McDaniel is also a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the Association of Computing Machinery. 

For the first time in the award’s history, it was given to two professors in 2021. McDaniel shares the honor with Srinivas Devadas from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 

The awards will be bestowed in November at the organization’s Conference on Computer and Communications Security, which will be held virtually.