CSC News

Dr. Laurie Williams One of Four Faculty to Win Holladay Medal

NC State University News | Faculty and Staff

Dr. Laurie Williams, Goodnight Distinguished University Professor in Security Sciences, is one of four faculty members who received the Alexander Quarles Holladay Medal for Excellence, the highest honor bestowed by NC State and the university’s Board of Trustees. Chancellor Randy Woodson will recognize the awardees during a Celebration of Faculty Excellence on April 30.

The four 2024 Holladay Medal honorees are:

• Thomas Barrie, Professor, School of Architecture
• Linda Hanley-Bowdoin, William Neal Reynolds Distinguished Professor, Department of Plant and Microbial Biology
• Korukonda Murty, Progress Energy Distinguished Professor, Department of Nuclear Engineering
• Laurie Williams, Goodnight Distinguished University Professor in Security Sciences, Department of Computer Science

The award was named in honor of Alexander Quarles Holladay, NC State’s first professor of history and its first president. This year’s award winners have made outstanding and sustained contributions to the university through achievements in research, teaching, or extension and engagement. Honorees receive an engraved medal and framed certificate and will be honored at NC State’s spring commencement ceremony on May 7.

A faculty member in the Department of Computer Science at NC State for two decades, Williams is a leader of the university’s efforts in cybersecurity.  In her role as a lead principal investigator, Williams has overseen research expenditures exceeding an impressive $33 million to date. She leads three distinct research organizations: she is a founding director of NC State’s Secure Computing Institute, the director of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Secure Software Supply Chain Center and the co-director of the North Carolina Partnership for Cybersecurity Excellence sponsored by the National Security Agency (NSA). Additionally, Williams was the co-director of the NSA-sponsored Science of Security (SoS) Lablet from 2011-2023, focused on solving five hard problems through the discovery of formal underpinnings of the design of trusted systems. She is the current associate editor-in-chief of IEEE Security and Privacy and of IEEE Software.

She joined NC State in 2000 and was recently named the inaugural Goodnight Distinguished University Professor in Security Sciences. She served as acting department head of the Department of Computer Science from 2014-2015; associate department head from 2015-2016; and interim department head 2017-2018. Her research is situated at the confluence of software engineering and cybersecurity, specifically in the field of software security. With a focus on proactively engineering secure systems, Williams’ work aims to prevent cyber threats rather than merely reacting after attacks have occurred.

Throughout her distinguished career, Williams has earned numerous accolades, including the NSF CAREER Award and NC State’s Outstanding Teacher Award, and she has been named an NC State University Faculty Scholar. Her inductions into NC State’s Academy of Outstanding Teachers and the Research Leadership Academy showcase her exceptional impact on both education and research domains.

Williams received her Bachelor of Science in industrial engineering from Lehigh University, her MBA from Duke University, and her Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Utah.

For information on the other Holladay Medal winners, please see the College of Engineering news story.

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