Prof. Michael Franz was an early pioneer in the areas of mobile code and dynamic compilation, and in moving-target cyber defenses. His current research focuses primarily on software security and on virtual machine technology, including just-in-time compilation. Other research interests include programming languages and compilers, distributed and service-oriented computing, and certain areas of software engineering.Dr. Franz has graduated 36 Ph.D.s as primary advisor and is the Principal Investigator on a wide range of competitive grants from the federal government (NSF, DARPA, ONR, AFRL, DHS), totaling over $24M (of which $16M as sole PI).He is a Distinguished Professor at UCI, a Fellow of the AAAS, a Distinguished Scientist and Fellow of the ACM, a Fellow of IEEE, an Inaugural Fellow of IFIP, a recipient of a €60,000 Humboldt Research Award, the IEEE Computer Society Technical Achievement Award, an NSF CAREER Award and a Fulbright Scholarship.In 2021, Dr. Franz was named the recipient of the Charles P. “Chuck” Thacker Breakthrough in Computing Award by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). This award of $100,000 recognizes individuals or groups with out-of-the-box thinking and “can-do” approach to solving the unsolved.Specialties: Dr. Franz holds 6 awarded U.S. Patents. He has served as a technical expert witness in litigation. He is a sought after speaker and panelist, both nationally and internationally, and a frequent reviewer for conferences, journals, and funding agencies.