Norman Sadeh is a Professor in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). He is co-Founder of the School’s PhD Program in Societal Computing as well as co-Founder and co-Director of the Privacy Engineering Program.  Norman’s expertise includes cybersecurity, online privacy, mobile computing, the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence, user-oriented machine learning, human computer interaction, language technologies, and semantic web technologies. He is also well known for his seminal work in AI planning and scheduling, agent-based supply chain management, workflow management, automated trading.  Products based on his research have been deployed and commercialized by organizations such as IBM, Raytheon, Mitsubishi, Boeing, Numetrix (eventually acquired by JD Edwards/PeopleSoft/Oracle), ILOG (eventually acquired by IBM), and the US Army. His privacy research has also been credited with influencing the design of products at companies such as Apple, Google, and Facebook as well as activities at the US Federal Trade Commission and the California Office of the Attorney General. His work on automatically recognizing mobile user activities while minimizing battery life has influenced technologies found in most modern smartphones.

Norman is also a successful entrepreneur, having served as founding CEO and, until its acquisition in 2018, as chairman and chief scientist of Wombat Security Technologies, a company he co-founded to commercialize anti-phishing technologies he developed as part of research with several of his colleagues at CMU. Together with his collaborators, Norman grew Wombat Security Technologies into a leading provider of anti-phishing and cybersecurity awareness training technologies and one of the fastest growing companies in North America, prior to a successful acquisition by Proofpoint (NASDAQ: PFPT) in February 2018. In May 2018, Norman was honored with the 2018 Outstanding Entrepreneur of the Year award from the Pittsburgh Venture Capital Association.

In the late nineties, Dr. Sadeh was program manager with the European Commission’s ESPRIT research program, prior to serving for two years as Chief Scientist of the EU’s EUR 550M (US$650M) initiative in “New Methods of Work and eCommerce,” which included all pan-European research in cybersecurity and privacy. As such, he was responsible for shaping European research priorities in collaboration with industry and universities across Europe. These activities eventually resulted in the launch of over 200 R&D projects involving over 1,000 European organizations from industry and research. While at the Commission, Norman also contributed to a number of EU policy initiatives related to eCommerce, the Internet, cybersecurity, privacy and entrepreneurship.

Norman received his Ph.D. in Computer Science at CMU with a major in Artificial Intelligence and a minor in Operations Research. He holds a MS degree in computer science from the University of Southern California and a BS/MS degree in electrical engineering and applied physics from the Free University of Brussels (Belgium) as “Ingénieur Civil Physicien”. Norman is also IAPP certified in Privacy Technologies (CIPT).

Dr. Sadeh has authored or co-authored around 300 scientific publications. Over the years, his work has been recognized with a number of awards. 

Norman sits on the advisory board of the Future of Privacy Forum. His research as well as his views on cybersecurity, privacy, AI, mobile and IoT technologies are often covered in the press (e.g. Wall Street Journal, Wired, New York Times, Chronicle of Higher Education, Pittsburgh Post Gazette, Kiplinger, Huffington Post, Fast Company, Tech Crunch).