Norman Sadeh

Timeline

1. 1987–1991

   Scheduling PhD at Carnegie Mellon

   He earns a BS/MS in electrical engineering and applied physics at the Free University of Brussels and an MS in computer science at the University of Southern California. In 1987, he enters the PhD program in computer science at Carnegie Mellon with a major in artificial intelligence, where Mark Fox advises his dissertation on constraint satisfaction and scheduling, and in 1991, after completing the PhD, he joins the faculty as an assistant research professor at the Robotics Institute.

2. 1998–2000

   EU chief scientist for e-commerce

   While on leave from Carnegie Mellon, he works at the European Commission in Brussels, first as program manager in the ESPRIT research program and then, from 1998 to 2000, as Chief Scientist of its EUR 550 million program in New Methods of Work and e-Commerce. In that role he shapes European research priorities with industry and universities.

3. 2008–2011

   Co-founding Wombat Security

   In 2008, he co-founds Wombat Security Technologies with fellow Carnegie Mellon professors Lorrie Faith Cranor and Jason Hong, and serves as its founding CEO until 2011. The company trains employees to recognize phishing attacks, and he is its chairman from 2008 to 2018 and its chief scientist from 2011 to 2018.

4. 2013

   The Usable Privacy Policy Project

   In 2013, Carnegie Mellon announces the Usable Privacy Policy Project, a 42-month, $3.75 million National Science Foundation effort that he leads. Working with law researchers at Fordham and Stanford, the team uses crowdsourcing, machine learning and natural language processing to teach computers to read website privacy policies and produce short digests of the points that matter most to people.

5. 2018

   Wombat sold to Proofpoint

   Proofpoint announces in February 2018 that it will buy Wombat for $225 million, and the sale is complete by March 2018. In May 2018, the Pittsburgh Venture Capital Association names him its 2018 Outstanding Entrepreneur of the Year.

6. 2022

   Livehoods wins Test of Time

   In 2022, the Livehoods project that he heads at Carnegie Mellon receives the Test of Time Award from the International Conference on Web and Social Media. The 2012 study, with Jason Hong, Justin Cranshaw and Raz Schwartz, analyzes 18 million public tweets with location data from cities like New York, San Francisco and Pittsburgh to show how people interact with their cities.

7. 2025

   Android permissions Test of Time

   In February 2025, a team featuring him, Patrick Gage Kelley and Lorrie Cranor receives the Test of Time Award at the Symposium on Usable Security and Privacy in San Diego for the 2012 paper "A Conundrum of Permissions: Installing Applications on an Android Smartphone". Mobile app privacy papers by the same co-authors have influenced industry practices, including the privacy labels adopted by iOS and Android.

8. As of October 2026

   Co-director of Privacy Engineering

   He is a professor in Carnegie Mellon's School of Computer Science and co-director of its Privacy Engineering Program, which he co-founded in 2012. In November 2025, he gives a keynote at IEEE TPS 2025 in Pittsburgh on usable privacy and security in the age of AI and the Internet of Things, covering privacy and security assistants and privacy and security nudging.