When Paolo Gasti left Italy to pursue academic opportunities in the United States, cyber security was his calling. While pursuing a Ph.D. in computer science at the University of Genoa, he earned a Fulbright scholarship that brought him to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, to conduct research into his area of expertise.

After the yearlong Fulbright experience, Gasti completed his Ph.D. back in Italy. Before long, he returned to the United States and joined the SPROUT cyber security research group at the University of California, Irvine, where he worked on the design of a new secure Internet architecture to enhance future network communications. His efforts coalesced in the Named-Data Networking Project funded by the National Science Foundation.

Since joining NYIT, Gasti has collaborated with colleagues to identify more secure ways to log into mobile devices and on the Web. He participates in the university's annual Cyber Security Conference and serves as an expert voice in the media, including a February 2013 interview about recent hacking incidents for a video report by Voice of America, Channel 2 News, and Reuters.

His research focuses on privacy-preserving genomic computation. In other words, as advanced DNA sequencing technologies revolutionize the medical field and bring the possibility of digitized genomes closer to reality, Gasti is interested in how engineers will address the privacy concerns of individuals who may one day have access to obtaining and storing their DNA sequences online.

He has already co-invented a cryptographic technique that allows two parties to perform genomic tests without disclosing their DNA sequences. It is the basis for GenoDroid, a framework for building smartphone apps co-developed by Gasti to enable secure genetic tests.

Gasti returns to Europe periodically to present his research and visit with family and friends in Savona, a small town in northern Italy.

Pursuing dynamic academic research is vital for all educators, Gasti says. I look forward to every day when I have the opportunity to share new knowledge in the classroom here at NYIT.