Medical Device Security Center

A cross-disciplinary research initiative on medical device security, privacy, safety, and effectiveness

The Medical Device Security Center is a cross-disciplinary partnership between researchers at:

• the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School,
• the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and
• the University of Washington.

Our mission is to help improve the understanding of and balance between security, privacy, safety, and effectiveness for next-generation medical and pervasive healthcare devices.

Director Biographies

• Kevin Fu, University of Massachusetts Amherst.

  Kevin Fu is an assistant professor of computer science at UMass Amherst, where he co-directs the Medical Device Security Center. He is the principal investigator of the Radio Frequency Identification Consortium on Security and Privacy (RFID CUSP). His research involves the security and privacy of pervasive technology, including RFID technology, implantable medical devices and file systems. His contributions include cryptographic methods for secure-content distribution and security analysis of medical devices, RFID-enabled credit cards and software update mechanisms. Fu has served on many program committees for conferences in computer security and cryptography. His research has been widely covered by the press, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and Good Morning America. Fu earned his bachelor’s degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and went on to receive his master’s and Ph.D. degrees in electrical computing and computer science from MIT. He also served as a visiting scholar at the Johns Hopkins Information Security Institute.

• Tadayoshi Kohno, University of Washington.

  Tadayoshi Kohno is an assistant professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Washington. His research focuses on assessing and improving the security and privacy properties of current and future technologies, and he serves as co-director of the Medical Device Security Center. Kohno is the recipient of a 2008 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, and in 2007 was recognized by MIT’s Technology Review magazine as one of the world’s top innovators under the age of 35. His 2003 analysis of the Diebold AccuVote-TS electronic voting machine helped catalyze the national debate on e-voting security. Kohno’s demonstration of security flaws in the Nike+iPod Sport Kit sparked widespread discussion on security of consumer electronics. He has presented voting machine research to the U.S. House and has been cited in media outlets ranging from The New York Times to CNN Headline News. Kohno received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder and went on to earn his master’s and Ph.D. degrees in computer science from the University of California at San Diego. He served as a visiting scholar at the Johns Hopkins Information Security Institute and at the University of California at Berkeley.

• William H. Maisel, Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital and Harvard Medical School.

  Dr. William H. Maisel is director of the Medical Device Safety Institute at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. He has an active cardiology practice and also directs the Pacemaker and Defibrillator Service at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. His research interests involve the safe and effective use of medical devices, and he has published extensively on the safety of pacemakers and defibrillators, drug-eluting stents and other cardiovascular devices. He received his M.D. from Cornell University, his MPH from the Harvard School of Public Health, and completed his internal medicine and cardiovascular training at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Maisel is an FDA consultant and former Chairman of the FDA’s Circulatory System Medical Device Advisory Panel.