Nicolas Christin

Nicolas Christin is a Professor and Department Head in the Software and Societal Systems Department at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science. He holds joint appointments in the Department of Engineering & Public Policy and is a core faculty member at CyLab, CMU’s university-wide security and privacy institute, with additional courtesy affiliations in Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Christin earned a Diplôme d'Ingénieur from École Centrale Lille (1999), followed by an M.S. (2000) and Ph.D. (2003) in Computer Science from the University of Virginia. He was a postdoctoral fellow at UC Berkeley’s School of Information (2003–2005) before joining CMU in 2005. He served in various roles including Associate Director of the Information Networking Institute (2008–2013), research faculty in ECE and S3D, and tenured Associate Professor (2019–2022) before becoming a full Professor and Department Head.

His research spans cybersecurity, privacy, and societal computing, with a strong emphasis on empirical measurement and interdisciplinary approaches. Key areas include security analytics, blockchain and cryptocurrency systems, online crime modeling, censorship measurement, usable privacy and security, and security economics. His work combines systems, networking, economics, and human behavior to understand and improve real-world security outcomes.

The recent publications reflect a consistent focus on blockchain security (e.g., address poisoning, amplification attacks), censorship measurement (Great Firewall, probe generation), and human behavior in security (teen crypto users, copy-trading, statistical misuse in research). His group frequently publishes at top venues including USENIX Security, CCS, PETS, WWW, and CHI, often with empirical, data-driven methodologies.

• 2017 CSIS Fellow
• 2019 Carnegie IT Dean Early Career Fellow
• 2020 Allen Newell Award for Research Excellence
• 2023 IEEE S&P Test-of-Time Award
• Best Paper Awards at CHI 2017 and USENIX Security 2016
• Best Student Paper at USENIX Security 2014
• 2024 Best Portuguese Internet Research Award

Christin advises a vibrant research group of Ph.D. students and has mentored numerous graduates who now hold positions at Meta, AWS, NIST, Palo Alto Networks, and academia. He co-directs the Secure Blockchain Initiative and has directed the Societal Computing Ph.D. program. His research is supported by the NSF, DHS, Google, Ripple, CMU Portugal, and other public and private entities. He has served on program committees for top security conferences and testified before the U.S. Congress on data monetization and illicit finance.