ADELPHI, Md. -- U.S. Army scientist Dr. Charles Kamhoua is the latest recipient of the Sigma Xi Young Investigator Award for his leadership and contributions to game theory applied to cybersecurity.
Sigma Xi, an honor society for scientific research, established the Young Investigator Award to recognize individuals within 10 years of earning their highest graduate degree for their scientific achievements, interdisciplinary research, and the ability to communicate the significance of their achievements to the public.
Kamhoua, a researcher at the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command’s Army Research Laboratory, is a game theorist and senior electronics engineer with extensive research expertise in network security and resilience. He has co-authored more than 200 technical papers, five of which received best paper awards. Kamhoua has co-edited four books related to network security, entitled “Assured Cloud Computing,” “Blockchain for Distributed System Security,” “Modeling and Design of Secure Internet of Things” and “Game Theory and Machine Learning for Cyber Security.”
An inventor with nine U.S. patents awarded or pending, Kamhoua has two patents licensed to mitigate hardware trojan-induced data leakage, which address a well-known national problem of supply chain security, as the U.S. often relies on computer hardware manufactured internationally.
“Dr. Kamhoua’s research record is truly outstanding, with patents and publications in conferences, journals, and magazines,” said Dr. Nandi Leslie, an engineering fellow at Ratheon, who nominated him for the Young Investigator Award. “In addition to his phenomenal independent work, he collaborates and creates new partnerships for the lab with academia and industry to meet Army modernization objectives and close challenging research gaps.”
Kamhoua has been focused on challenging cybersecurity issues in defense, first at the Air Force Research Laboratory, and now at the Army’s corporate research lab.
“The Department of Defense is addressing several cybersecurity problems that are challenging, interesting and applicable in the battlefield as well as the commercial sector,” Kamhoua said. “As researchers in defense, we have unique opportunities to collaborate with other researchers in government laboratories, industry and academia, both nationally and internationally.”
Kamhoua leads the proactive action research group at the lab’s network security branch, a team that focuses on cyber deception, cyber resilience, and cyber agility or moving target defense. He has published journal papers and conference proceedings on topics including vehicular network security, cyber-physical system security, cyber threat information-sharing, using game theory and other computational modeling techniques.
“Dr. Kamhoua’s research ideas are truly novel and original and showcase his intellectual capacity to make an impact on new areas and create needed solutions to important problems,” Leslie said. “His work provides deep theoretical insights, new algorithms, and sound empirical evidence for using game theory to enhance network security and resilience beyond the current state-of-the-art.”
Kamhoua has been a visiting researcher at institutions such as Harvard University and the University of Oxford. The White House, the U.S. Congress and the Pentagon have congratulated him for his research contributions recognized in numerous awards, including the 2019 U.S. Army Civilian Service Commendation Medal, the 2019 Federal 100-FCW annual awards for individuals that have had an exceptional impact on federal IT, the 2019 IEEE ComSoc Technical Committee on Big Data (TCBD) Best Journal Paper Award, the 2018 ARL Achievement Award for leadership and outstanding contribution to the ARL Cyber Camo (cyber deception) project, the 2018 Fulbright Senior Specialist Fellowship, the 2017 AFRL Information Directorate Basic Research Award “For Outstanding Achievements in Basic Research,” the 2017 Fred I. Diamond Award for the best paper published at AFRL’s Information Directorate, the 2016 FIU Charles E. Perry Young Alumni Visionary Award, the 2015 Black Engineer of the Year Award (BEYA), the 2015 NSBE Golden Torch Award—Pioneer of the Year, and selection to the 2015 Heidelberg Laureate Forum.
CCDC Army Research Laboratory is an element of the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command. As the Army’s corporate research laboratory, ARL discovers, innovates and transitions science and technology to ensure dominant strategic land power. Through collaboration across the command’s core technical competencies, CCDC leads in the discovery, development and delivery of the technology-based capabilities required to make Soldiers more lethal to win the nation’s wars and come home safely. CCDC is a major subordinate command of the U.S. Army Futures Command.
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