Prof. Ehab Al-Shaer
Distinguished Research Fellow S3D and Faculty Member of CyLab, School of Computer Science Carnegie Mellon University Email: ehab@cmu.edu / ehab.alshaer@gmail.com
Books
7,395 downloads
5,859 downloads
4,179 downloads
20,000+ downloads
As of August 2025
Biography
Professor Ehab Al-Shaer is an academic professor and entrepreneur known for his pioneering work in cybersecurity analytics, automation, and configuration verification. He has served as a Distinguished Career Professor in the College of Engineering and a Distinguished Research Fellow in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. In 2011, he was designated a Subject Matter Expert (SME) in Cybersecurity Analytics and Automation. He is also the founder and former director (2011–2019) of the National Science Foundation Center on Cybersecurity Analytics and Automation (CCAA).
Professor Al-Shaer is recognized for his groundbreaking contributions to the formal modeling of firewall configurations for verification and optimization, mutable networks for moving target defense, and AI-driven autonomous cyber defense agents for dynamic cyber deception and response. He has edited nine books, published over 300 refereed journal and conference articles, and supervised more than seventeen Ph.D. graduates in the field of cybersecurity. He also has several accepted and submitted patents.
Prof. Al-Shaer received many Best Paper Awards at conferences, including IEEE DSAA (2021) and DBSec (2023). Al-Shaer has served as a speaker and panelist at IEEE NOMS, ACM MTD, ACM SACMAT, SINET, and other conferences and was invited to brief the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy in 2014.
Professor Al-Shaer was recognized as a Department of Defense Subject Matter Expert (SME) in cybersecurity analytics and automation in 2011. He received the IBM Faculty Award in 2012 and the UNC Charlotte Faculty Research Award in 2013. Earlier in his career, he received the Distinguished Alumni Award from Old Dominion University in 2003 and a NASA scholarship between 1995 and 1998.
Throughout his career, Prof. Al-Shaer has secured over $30 million in research funding from various government agencies—including NSF, NSA, DARPA, ARO, ARL, AFRL, ONR, and NavAir—as well as from leading industry partners such as IBM, Cisco, Intel, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, BB&T, DTCC, Duke Energy, CIS, RTI, among others.
He received many Best Paper Awards at conferences, including IEEE IM (2003), IEEE/ACM INCP/AISec (2007), IEEE POLICY (2009), IEEE DSAA (2021) and DBSec (2023).
As an advisory board member, founder, and Chief R&D Officer of multiple startups, as well as co-Principal Investigator (co-PI) on several SBIR grants, he has successfully translated advanced academic research into practical, impactful platforms. His work effectively bridges the gap between theoretical concepts and real-world operational tools, significantly advancing cybersecurity.
Research
Formal cybersecurity configuraiton verification, autonomous cyber defense, cyber deterrence and deception, and AI-empowered cybersecurity.