Charles A. Kamhoua is the 2020 Young Investigator Award recipient. The award includes a certificate of recognition, a $5,000 honorarium, and an invitation to present a lecture at the Sigma Xi Annual Meeting and Student Research Conference.
Kamhoua receives the award for his outstanding leadership and contribution to game theory applied to cyber security.
He is a senior electronics engineer at the Network Security Branch of the U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL) in Adelphi, Maryland, where he is responsible for conducting and directing basic research in the area of game theory applied to cyber security.
Prior to joining the Army Research Laboratory, he was a researcher at the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) in Rome, New York, for six years and an educator in different academic institutions for more than 10 years. He has held visiting research positions at the University of Oxford and Harvard University. He has co-authored more than 200 peer-reviewed journal and conference papers that include five best paper awards. He is a co-inventor of three patents and six patent applications. He has been at the forefront of several new technologies, co-editing four books at Wiley-IEEE Press entitled Game Theory and Machine Learning for Cyber Security, Modeling and Design of Secure Internet of Things, Blockchain for Distributed System Security, and Assured Cloud Computing.
He has presented over 70 invited keynote and distinguished speeches and has co-organized over 10 conferences and workshops. He has mentored more than 65 young scholars, including students, postdocs, and Summer Faculty Fellow. He has been recognized for his scholarship and leadership with numerous prestigious awards, including the 2020 Sigma Xi Young Investigator Award, the 2019 US 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, 40 Air Force Notable Achievement Awards, 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, to name a few. He has been congratulated by the White House, the US Congress and the Pentagon for those achievements.
He received a BS in electronics from the University of Douala (ENSET), Cameroon, in 1999, an MS in telecommunication and networking from Florida International University (FIU) in 2008, and a PhD in electrical engineering from FIU in 2011. He is currently an advisor for the National Research Council postdoc program and a member of the FIU alumni association and Sigma Xi, as well as a senior member of ACM and IEEE.