A professor at the University of Waterloo has received the institution’s highest honour for his decades of work in computer security. As of April 2026, N. Asokan has been named a University Professor, a prestigious lifetime title that recognizes exceptional scholarly achievement.
Asokan, who is a faculty member in the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science, is the sixth person from his department to receive this distinction. He was nominated for the honour by Professor Tamer Özsu, with support from Director Raouf Boutaba.
Throughout his career, Asokan has made significant contributions to global technology. He helped design the security protocols used in Bluetooth devices worldwide and pioneered technology that now secures mobile touch payments on smartphones. Additionally, his early research on fair exchange protocols, introduced during his doctoral studies, has been widely cited and implemented by major technology firms.
Asokan’s impact in the field is reflected in his body of work, which includes more than 175 academic papers and over 26,000 citations. He is a fellow of several organizations, including the IEEE, the ACM, and the Royal Society of Canada. Closer to home, he served as the executive director of the university’s Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute from 2021 to 2026.
While maintaining his academic role in Waterloo, Asokan began a part-time position as a Wallenberg Chair at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden in January 2026. He holds a PhD in computer science from the University of Waterloo, as well as degrees from Syracuse University and the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur.
