THIS ARTICLE WAS FIRST PUBLISHED IN JOURNEYS SUMMER 2023.  

At age 13, this Singapore American School Eagle developed a tablet that sold for $99. At age 18 and 19, he became the youngest-ever recipient of bachelor’s and master’s degrees in computer science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Born in Phoenix, Arizona, to a nomadic family, Vivek Nair (class of 2018) spent parts of his childhood in eight different cities, from San Jose to Singapore, while attending school online through Stanford University’s OHS program, and then earned his undergraduate and postgraduate degrees at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Named LOOP, the aforementioned tablet competed with rivals on the market in everything but price. Nair spent a lot of time sourcing parts for the tablet as he built it from scratch and then programmed it with some help from his educators Jim Diebley and Anthony Selley. Hugely successful as his first major entrepreneurial venture, LOOP sold over 1,000 pieces through Amazon. Nair has left the consumer electronics space but has carried the spirit of innovation with him, and has since filed more than 10 patents for various inventions, mostly related to cybersecurity.

Today, Nair develops cutting-edge cryptographic techniques to defend digital infrastructure against sophisticated cyberthreats. He believes that for every problem that exists in cybersecurity, there is a cryptographic solution waiting to be found.

As our world becomes increasingly connected, everything from our bank accounts to our power grids is susceptible to hackers, ransomware, and cyberwarfare. Currently a first-year graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, and a researcher at Cornell’s Initiative for Cryptocurrencies and Contracts, Nair studies new ways of using modern cryptography to engineer countermeasures against common digital threats. As a recipient of the National Science Foundation CyberCorps® Scholarship and NPSC Fellowship, he works closely with the US Department of Defense to build resilient cyber systems and address urgent national security threats.

Nair first began researching cybersecurity in 2015, when he founded Multifactor.com, a successful startup aimed at combating attacks on two-factor authentication, and he has authored numerous patents and patent applications for secure user authentication technologies.

Nair takes a leadership role in the cybersecurity community by giving talks at conferences, leading global hackathon teams, and delivering courses to over 1,000 students. He was also the recipient of the 2022 Tong Leong Lim Pre-Doctoral Prize at UC Berkeley, which is presented annually to the electrical engineering and computer science student who achieves the highest distinction in the pre-doctoral examination.

Nair is also a recipient of the prestigious 2022 Hertz Fellowship. In 2022, the fellowship funded 13 remarkable doctoral students who demonstrated extraordinary potential to become foremost leaders in their fields and tackle the most significant challenges facing the nation and the world. It will provide Nair US$250,000 in funding over the next five years to continue his pursuit of cybersecurity research.

Outside of cybersecurity, he is a competitive virtual reality esports player and the captain of Berkeley’s “SSS” Beat Saber team, which he led to a US national collegiate championship victory in 2021.

Nair’s advice for students pursuing cybersecurity:

1. Build a solid foundation of computer science knowledge
2. Compete in hackathons and online Capture the Flag (CTF) hacking competitions
3. Check out the CyberCorps program, a US government initiative that covers three years of college tuition for students interested in pursuing a career in cybersecurity