Agnes H. Chan

Research interests

• Applied cryptography
• Secure communication

Education

• PhD in Mathematics, Ohio State University
• MS in Mathematics, Ohio State University
• BA in Mathematics, Smith College

Biography

Agnes Chan is a professor emeritus and the executive director of information assurance and cybersecurity in the Khoury College of Computer Sciences at Northeastern University, based in Boston.

Chan's research focuses on cryptography and communication security. In the past, she designed efficient implementations on divisible electronic cash and efficient mutual authentication algorithms for small mobile devices. In recent years, Chan has worked on protocols, key management schemes, and anti-jamming algorithms for securing communications among devices in a hostile, resource-constrained environment, and has examined practical algorithms to ensure privacy and security on open clouds.

Chan joined Northeastern's faculty in 1977, five years before the university established its computing college. In 2005, she led the effort to establish the interdisciplinary Institute of Information Assurance with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Northeastern. She was also instrumental in Northeastern's designation by the NSA and the Department of Homeland Security as a Center of Academic Excellence in information assurance education, research, and cyber operations.

Chan holds two patents, one on ultrafast pseudorandom sequence generators and another on software-based stream ciphers. She has also been widely published in IEEE conferences and journals, as well as Crypto and Eurocrypt. Her research has been funded by the NSA, NSF, DARPA, and telecommunication firms. Chan has also served on the IEE Information Theory Society's board of directors and is currently on the editorial board of the International Journal on Cryptography and Communication.

Chan has actively promoted women in STEM. She was an invited speaker at NSA’s “Women in Mathematics” and “Alumni Mathematicians” at Smith College. She is also serving on Northeastern's Committee for Strategies and Tactics for Recruiting to Improve Diversity and Excellence.

Projects

Recent publications