Rate My Professor Willy Susilo

Willy Susilo is a Distinguished Professor and Australian Laureate Fellow at the School of Computing and Information Technology within the Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences at the University of Wollongong. As Director of the Institute of Cybersecurity and Cryptology (IC²), he leads research in cybersecurity and cryptology. Susilo obtained his PhD in Computer Science from the University of Wollongong in 2001, following a Master of Computer Science from the same university in 1991 and a Bachelor of Computer Engineering from Universitas Surabaya, Indonesia, in 1994. His academic career at UOW began as a Lecturer in 2001, advancing through Senior Lecturer (2003-2005), Associate Professor (2006-2009), Professor (2009-2013), Senior Professor (2014-2021), and Head of the School of Computing and Information Technology from 2015 to 2025. Previously, he headed the School of Computer Science and Software Engineering (2009-2010) and served as Deputy Director of the ICT Research Institute (2006-2008).

Susilo's research focuses on cybersecurity, cryptography, and privacy, resulting in over 700 publications with an h-index of 86 and more than 27,000 citations according to metrics reported on official profiles. His seminal contributions include short signature schemes adopted in an IETF draft, and he has co-authored books such as Introduction to Security Reduction (Springer, 2018), Advances in Cyber Security: Principles, Techniques, and Applications (Springer, 2019), and Cyber Security Meets Machine Learning (Springer, 2021). He has attracted over $200 million in research funding, including the ARC Laureate Fellowship in 2023 for Secure Cloud Computing from Cryptography: The Rise of Pragmatic Cryptography, ARC Future Fellowship in 2009, and grants from NATO and others. Recognized as a world-leading expert, Susilo is a Fellow of IEEE (2021), IET (2021), ACS, AAIA, AIIA, and IACR. His accolades include the 2024 NSW Premier's Prize for Excellence in Engineering and Communications Technology, 2024 UOW Alumni Award for Research and Scholarship, Fulbright Scholar in 2026, UOW Researcher of the Year (2016), and Supervisor of the Year (2019). He serves as Editor-in-Chief of Computers Standards & Interfaces (Elsevier) and Information (MDPI), and Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security and IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing.