About CyLab
Everything we do is fueled by our passion to create a world in which technology can be trusted.
Carnegie Mellon University CyLab is the University's security and privacy research institute. Housed in the 25,000+ sq. ft. Collaborative Innovation Center, we bring together experts from all schools across the University, encompassing the fields of engineering, computer science, public policy, information systems, business, financial information risk management, humanities, and social sciences.
CyLab researchers are often called upon by government leaders to provide expertise on security and privacy issues. Their work in helping shape public policy related to security and privacy spans several decades.
Check out CyLab's Year in Review collection to read about research highlights and other security and privacy-related activities from the past year.
Our Mission
Our mission is to catalyze, support, promote, and strengthen collaborative security and privacy research and education across departments, disciplines, and geographic boundaries to achieve significant impact on research, education, public policy, and practice.
Our Values
- Interdisciplinarity - our research is interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary, considering security and privacy broadly, with methods that cross disciplinary boundaries.
- Collaboration - we aim to facilitate diverse collaborations across departmental, disciplinary, and geographic boundaries and partner with business, government, non-profit, and community organizations to achieve impactful results.
- Innovation - we strive to provide resources and create an environment that helps produce innovative and creative ideas and solutions.
- Excellence - we value scientific rigor and research excellence, consistent with best practices in our respective disciplines.
- Impact - we strive for research and education with real-world impact, influencing our respective research fields, business practices, and public policy.
- Inclusion - we strive to improve the representation and climate for underrepresented groups in the security and privacy field. We also strive to conduct research that helps understand the needs of diverse communities and works towards providing increased security and privacy for everyone.
Fast facts about CyLab
- Over 150 faculty and more than 160 graduate and Ph.D. students from departments across Carnegie Mellon University
- More than 25 corporate partnerships
- Over 50 courses in security and privacy
- Eight-time “World Series of Hacking” champions
Visit us
CyLab is located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on the campus of Carnegie Mellon University. Our offices are on the second floor of the Robert Mehrabian Collaborative Innovation Center (CIC), located at 4720 Forbes Avenue.
Visitors are encouraged to park in the a pay-as-you-park garage below ground with elevators to reach the CIC main floors. (You can find more detailed instructions here.) The below-ground parking facility is only accessible from Neville Street. If you are traveling East on Forbes Avenue towards the CIC, turn left at S. Craig St., then turn right onto Filmore Street. Then, turn right onto Neville Street. Turn slight left before the set of train tracks and into the CIC garage.
For hotel recommendations, transportation options and other useful information, read more about visiting CyLab.
Hiring
Interested in working as a faculty or staff member in CyLab? Check out our hiring page for more info.
Meet our partners
Working collaboratively with industry leaders, CyLab researchers are helping to develop new and innovative technologies, methods, models, and policies that will shape the safety and security of systems for all users.
Lorrie Faith Cranor, Director of CyLab
Source: Lorrie Cranor
Lorrie Faith Cranor is the Director of CyLab and the Bosch Distinguished Professor in Security and Privacy Technologies. She is a Professor of Computer Science and of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon, where she is director of the CyLab Usable Privacy and Security Laboratory (CUPS) and co-director of the MSIT-Privacy Engineering masters program. In 2016 she served as Chief Technologist at the US Federal Trade Commission, working in the office of Chairwoman Ramirez. She is also a co-founder of Wombat Security Technologies, Inc, a security awareness training company. She has authored over 150 research papers on online privacy, usable security, and other topics. She has played a key role in building the usable privacy and security research community, having co-edited the seminal book Security and Usability (O'Reilly 2005) and founded the Symposium On Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS). She was previously a researcher at AT&T-Labs Research and taught in the Stern School of Business at New York University. She holds a doctorate in Engineering and Policy from Washington University in St. Louis.