Faculty

Kurt Friday

rocky-bull

Assistant Professor of Instruction

ENB 301C

Email

Biography

Kurt Friday is an assistant professor of instruction in the USF Bellini College of Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity and Computing. He joined the college in 2025 and brings expertise in designing real鈥憈ime, efficient, and practical solutions across cybersecurity, forensics, and AI. Drawing on extensive collaborations with industry, government, and critical鈥憇ector partners, he is developing hands鈥憃n, industry鈥慺ocused courses that expose students to technologies they will encounter in their careers and equip them with the skills to excel from day one. 

Research Interests 

Friday鈥檚 research sits at the intersection of cybersecurity, machine learning, and advancements in state鈥憃f鈥憈he鈥慳rt hardware, with core contributions spanning hardware-accelerated security, forensics, and machine learning, as well as programmable networks. His work explores how to create cohesive hardware鈥憇oftware ecosystems that are both performant and resilient, even in the face of evolving cyber threats. He is particularly interested in building high鈥憇peed, trustworthy systems that span host and network domains by employing techniques such as adversarial modeling, anomaly detection, malicious behavior classification, side-channel analysis, and network telemetry. 
He has authored or served as a leader on several grants, including collaborations with Samsung Memory Solutions and the United States Secret Service, to build hardware-resident AI defenses for production environments and real-world systems. He also serves as co鈥慹ntrepreneurial lead on National Science Foundation鈥慺unded projects that investigate zero鈥慸ay vulnerabilities in electric鈥憊ehicle systems, architect robust security frameworks and secure communication protocols, and deploy AI-powered monitoring mechanisms that operate in real time. 
At USF, he plans to launch immersive, interactive programs for students covering the development of hardware鈥慳ccelerated, AI鈥慸riven solutions for  high鈥憈hroughput cybersecurity and forensic applications, while concurrently securing these systems through chip鈥憀evel vulnerability analysis, secure firmware engineering, and architectural threat modeling. His ultimate goal is to develop practical assurance methods for next鈥慻eneration computing platforms in domains such as defense, aerospace, and critical infrastructure to set new standards for speed, reliability, and trust in secure computing. 

Education

  • Ph.D. in Computer Science from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, LA
  • Doctoral Studies in Information Technology & Cyber Security, The University of Texas at San Antonio
  • M.S. in Computer Science from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, LA
  • Bachelors in Computer Science from Florida Atlantic University from Boca Raton, FL

Honors and Awards

Friday was recognized for outstanding performance in his research contributions and coursework during his doctoral studies at the University of Texas at San Antonio. He has authored and co-authored several publications in venues such as the European Symposium on Research in Computer Security (ESORICS) and Computers & Security, and he received a Best Paper Award at the International Conference on Availability, Reliability and Security (ARES) conference in 2019. He was also recognized for his distinguished scholarly achievement amid his earlier studies at Florida Atlantic University.