Ando named Minnie McNeal Kenny Assistant Professor

Megumi Ando of the Department of Computer Science was recently named Minnie McNeal Kenny Assistant Professor, a new professorship that will support her for the next five years. The professorship was created to launch the appointed junior faculty member’s career development and enhance efforts to retain standout junior faculty who will be instrumental in teaching and learning at Tufts. Established through a generous gift from anonymous donors in 2024, the professorship is named in honor of famed cryptanalyst Minnie McNeal Kenny in tribute to her immeasurable impact on the field of cryptology. 

At Tufts, Ando studies the mathematical foundations of computer science and teaches computation theory. She leads the Ando Lab, where her research group focuses on the theoretical foundations of anonymous communications, and is affiliated with Tufts’ new Cybersecurity Center for Public Good. The Center will serve as a hub for collaborators focused on complementary research problems across the university. Efforts in computer security and privacy will expand beyond traditional academic borders, benefiting the university’s larger research and education mission.

Ando received her PhD in Computer Science from Brown University, studying cryptography, probabilistic methods, and machine learning with James A. and Julie N. Brown Professor Anna Lysyanskaya and Professor Eli Upfal. Her recently-published research includes “Poly Onions: Achieving Anonymity in the Presence of Churn in Lecture Notes in Computer Science, and “On the complexity of anonymous communication through public networks” in Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics.

Previously, Ando led independent research projects as a lead cybersecurity research scientist at the MITRE Corporation, where she received a fellowship to pursue her PhD. She worked as a modeling consultant and software developer at BitSight Technologies (formerly Saperix Inc.) and Oracle Corporation, respectively. She earned BS degrees and an MEng in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 

Learn more about Minnie McNeal Kenny Assistant Professor Megumi Ando.