Jennifer Fernick
Global Head of Research

Jennifer Fernick is a computer science researcher, cybersecurity leader, technical advisor, and speaker with deep technical expertise in cryptography, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence. She is currently Global Head of Research at NCC Group, a global information assurance firm, is a National Security Institute Visiting Technologist Fellow at George Mason University, and sits on the Governing Board of the Open Source Security Foundation (a part of the Linux Foundation). Most recently, she was Director, Information Security at a major global financial institution. She has spent nearly five years as a PhD researcher at the University of Waterloo, as a member of the Institute for Quantum Computing and the Centre for Applied Cryptographic Research. Jennifer was a part of the 2018 cohort of the Berkman Assembly at Harvard University and MIT Media Lab, focussing on Artificial Intelligence & its Governance. Her career has included designing and building satellite systems, working on bleeding edge cryptography research, building secure systems at massive scale, running incident response events for core pieces of critical infrastructure, and leading the development of global technology standards. She holds a Master of Engineering degree in Systems Design Engineering from the University of Waterloo, and an Honours Bachelor of Science in Cognitive Science & Artificial Intelligence from the University of Toronto.

Sessions