Lujo Bauer
Lujo Bauer is a computer security researcher whose work connects usable access control and privacy with adversarial machine learning and AI security. He earned a B.S. in computer science at Yale and a Ph.D. at Princeton, developed Polymer for Java security policies, and coauthored a face-recognition study using printed eyeglasses. In 2025, he coauthored work on LLM prompt attacks and multi-host red teaming; ACM named him a Fellow for contributions to access control, usable security and privacy, and security of machine learning. As of October 2026, he is a professor at Carnegie Mellon and co-directs its Cyber Autonomy Initiative; he teaches machine learning for cybersecurity.
Timeline
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1997–2003
Yale and Princeton degrees
He earns a B.S. in computer science at Yale in 1997 and a Ph.D. in computer science at Princeton in 2003.
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2005
Composing policies with Polymer
In 2005, he coauthors Composing Security Policies with Polymer, a language and system for defining and composing run-time security policies for Java applications.
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2014–2015
Chairing security conferences
At Carnegie Mellon, he serves as program chair for the Internet Society's NDSS in 2014 and IEEE's S&P in 2015.
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2016
Printable eyeglasses fool face recognition
In 2016, he coauthors Accessorize to a Crime, a study that uses printed eyeglasses to fool face-recognition algorithms into misidentifying people or failing to recognize them.
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2025
Incalmo for multi-host red teaming
In 2025, he coauthors Incalmo, an LLM-assisted system for red teaming multi-host networks. It uses LLMs to plan high-level tasks for domain-specific agents and reaches critical assets in 37 of 40 test environments, compared with 3 of 40 for existing systems.
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2025
LLM Whisperer
At CHI 2025, he coauthors LLM Whisperer, which studies how subtle synonym substitutions in prompts can bias LLM responses toward a target concept. The experiments report a difference of up to 78% in the likelihood that LLMs mention the target.
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2025
An ACM Fellowship
ACM names him a 2025 Fellow for contributions to access control, usable security and privacy, and the security of machine learning.
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As of October 2026
Professor and cyber autonomy co-director
As of October 2026, he is a professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Software and Societal Systems at Carnegie Mellon and co-director of the Cyber Autonomy Initiative. He researches computer security, privacy, usable security and adversarial machine learning, and teaches Special Topics in Security: ML for Cybersecurity in Fall 2026.
Career
- NowCarnegie Mellon UniversityProfessor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Software and Societal Systems
Education
- 2003Princeton UniversityPh.D. in Computer Science
- 1997Yale UniversityB.S. in Computer Science
Sources and credits
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- Lujo Bauer - Electrical and Computer Engineering - College of Engineering - Carnegie Mellon University
- Composing security policies with polymer - Princeton University
- CyLab researchers spoof state-of-the-art facial recognition algorithms with printable eyeglasses - CyLab Security and Privacy Institute
- [2501.16466] Incalmo: An Autonomous LLM-assisted System for Red Teaming Multi-Host Networks
- CyLab Cyber Autonomy Initiative - CyLab Security and Privacy Institute
- Researchers to Present at ACM CHI 2025 - Electrical and Computer Engineering - College of Engineering - Carnegie Mellon University
- Bauer named 2025 ACM Fellow - CyLab Security and Privacy Institute
- CyLab announces Cyber Autonomy Initiative to advance AI-driven cyber defense - CyLab Security and Privacy Institute
- Lujo Bauer