Interests:
Information security, computer architecture, high assurance systems, history of computing
Career Highlights:
Dr. Rick Smith joined the full-time faculty at the University St. Thomas in 2003 after having served as an adjunct instructor for GPS since 1997. His specialty is information security and he is the author of the books Internet Cryptography and Authentication: From Passwords to Public Keys.
Dr. Smith teaches courses in information security, programming, computer architecture, operating systems, and computer networking. In addition to the books, he has published six journal articles and numerous other papers on information security, robotics, and computer history.
Dr. Smith's career began over thirty years ago with a summer job in Massachusetts writing real time system software and microcode for a custom-built speech recognition device. He was then employed by Bolt, Beranek, and Newman, where he wrote network protocol software for the ARPANET, the prototype for today's Internet. While attending graduate school in Minnesota, Dr. Smith continued working, and developed device drivers, file system software, databases, and computer language parsers for a variety of employers and clients.
Following graduate school, Dr. Smith has contributed to research and development projects in robotics, trusted operating systems, and information security. For twelve years, Dr. Smith worked at Secure Computing Corporation as a software developer and systems engineer, involved primarily in developing secure e-mail switches for military command centers. As an independent consultant, he has worked with attorneys on patent cases, with private companies on authentication products, and with US defense contractors on cryptographic systems and multilevel data sharing. Dr. Smith has been an invited speaker at many Twin Cities events as well as the Black Hat conferences, the US Federal Reserve Board, and the US National Security Agency.
An active community volunteer, Dr. Smith serves as a member of the President's Cabinet of the Northern Star Council of the Boy Scouts, and is a tournament judge at the regional and state level for the Minnesota FIRST Lego League.
GPS Courses:
Operating Systems Design -- SEIS 640
Education:
Ph.D. Computer Science, University of Minnesota;
M.S. Computer Science, University of Minnesota;
B.S. Engineering, Boston University.
