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Rajesh Dhakal was born in 1970 in Dharan, from where he got his pre-university education. He passed SLC from the Secondary Boarding School, Dharan, and Intermediate of Science (I. Sc.) from Hattisar Campus, which is also in Dharan. It was after the 1988 (B.S. 2045) earthquake which destroyed his own house and claimed many lives in his neighbourhood; he decided to become a structural earthquake engineer. He worked hard to achieve this, and finally here he is, an established researcher in one of the world’s leading universities in the field of structural/earthquake engineering.

He completed BE (Civil Engineering) from Pulchowk Campus (Institute of Engineering, Tribhuvan University) in 1993 with a gold medal. Thereafter, he worked as a lecturer in the same campus and as a civil engineer with several employers in Nepal for more than two years. In 1995, he resigned from his permanent job in the Department of Irrigation and accepted an ME scholarship from the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT), Thailand. After completing ME (Structural Engineering) from AIT with another gold medal and working there as a research associate for six months, he headed to Tokyo University with a PhD scholarship from the Asian Development Bank. After completing PhD (Structural/Earthquake Engineering) in 2000, he worked as a Research Fellow in Nanyang Technological University, Singapore for almost three years. Since 2003, he has been working as an academic staff in University of Canterbury, New Zealand. His research area includes performance based earthquake engineering (PBEE), and seismic design and analysis of reinforced concrete (RC) structures.

Despite a short academic/research career, he has till date:

* published over 45 technical papers in the form of peer-reviewed journal articles, refereed conference proceedings and project reports;
* been awarded funding for several research proposals worth NZD159,400 as principal investigator (PI) and more than NZD5 million as a co-researcher;
* been involved in supervising 2 PhD, 11 ME and 6 undergraduate honours research projects;
* been requested to review several papers for 6 different international journals and 3 international conferences;
* been invited to deliver lectures in 8 structural/earthquake engineering related conferences and seminars;
* been requested to chair sessions in two international conferences;
* been invited to submit papers in two international journals and two international conferences; and
* been sought for advice and consultancy by professional companies in several occasions.

The honours and awards he has received to date are listed below:

* Invited by “Marques who is who in Engineering” to submit biography, 2005.

* Finalist, Lecturer of the year competition, University of Canterbury, 2005.
* Finalist, Lecturer of the year competition, University of Canterbury, 2004.
* Best Paper Award, Japan Concrete Institute, 2000.
* ADB PhD Scholarship, Asian Development Bank / Tokyo University, 1997-2000.
* Aoyagi Prize (ME Gold Medal), Asian Institute of Technology, 1997.
* The Government of Japan ME Scholarship, Asian Institute of Technology, 1995-1997.
* Vice-Chancellor Medal, Ministry of Education and Culture, Nepal, 1993.
* Mahendra Bidhya Bhusan, Decorated by His Majesty late King Birendra, 1993.
* Kulratna Tuladhar Award (BE Gold Medal), Institute of Engineering, Nepal, 1993.
* Paisley Prize, Nepal Engineering Students Society, 1989, 1990, 1991.
* Master of the Subject, Nepal Engineering Students Society, 1989, 1990, 1991.
* National Champion, All Nepal Inter-College Quiz-Contest Competition, Nepal Television, 1990.

He has also volunteered for several professional and social associations as listed below:

* Member of the organizing committee of two International Conferences.
* Member of 6 different international professional associations in civil engineering.
* Member of the management/executive committee: Structural Engineering Society Inc. (SESOC), New Zealand, since 2004.
* Member of the board of Trustees: Refugee and Migrant Centre (RMC), Christchurch, since 2004.
* Member of the management/executive committee: Nepal-New Zealand Friendship Society, Christchurch, 2004-05.
* Member of the management/executive committee: AIT Nepali Samaj, 1996.
* Student Member: General Assembly, Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand, 1996.
* Chair: Film and Video Committee, AIT Student Union, Thailand, 1996.
* President: Nepal Engineering Students Society (NESS), Kathmandu, 1990-91.

 

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James earned his Ph.D. degree in computer engineering and the M.S. degree in computer science from Purdue University, USA.and the B.E. degree in computer science and engineering (CSE) from Motilal Nehru Regional Engineering College in India. From 1993 to 1996, he worked as a lecturer of CSE at Kathmandu University (KU). At KU, he designed and implemented the first formal CSE undergraduate degree program in Nepal. At Purdue, his doctorate study was funded by the Center of Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security (CERIAS), a premier center in the US for research in information security.

Since August, 2003, James has been working as an assistant professor of School of Information Science at the University of Pittsburgh. He is a cofounder and coordinator of the Laboratory of Education and Research on Security Assured Information Systems (LERSAIS) at Pitt. In January, 2006, he was awarded a National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (NSF-CAREER) award for his research titled “A Trust-Based Access Control Management Framework for Secure Information Sharing and Multimedia Workflows in Heterogeneous Environments,” “The (CAREER) Program is a Foundation-wide activity that offers the NSF's most prestigious awards in support of the early career-development activities of those teacher-scholars who most effectively integrate research and education within the context of the mission of their organization.”

Earlier, he had led the efforts resulting in the designation of the University of Pittsburgh as a National Center of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance Education (NCAE/IAE) by the US’s National Security Agency (NSA) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). He had also led the LERSAIS efforts to develop an Information Assurance and Security program, which he currently directs, that has been certified as meeting all the five of the NSA established national IA education standards. Only 12 institutes in the US currently have all the five certifications.

He has published five book chapters, 11 journal papers (in the IEEE Computer and Internet Computing magazines; IEEE Transactions on: Multimedia, Knowledge and Data Engineering, and Dependable and Secure Computing; the Communications of the ACM and the ACM Transactions on Information and System Security), and several conference/workshop papers and technical reports. He serves on the editorial review boards for the International Journal for Network Security, and the International Journal for E-Business Research. He is a Program co-chair of the IEEE International Conference on Information Reuse and Integration, 2006, and the Workshop on Information Assurance, 2006; and a Workshop co-Chair for The 2nd International Conference on Collaborative Computing, 2006 (CollaborateCom - 2006). He has served as a technical program committee member of more than 15 conferences/workshops. Invited talks he has delivered include venues like CERIAS at Purdue, Carnegie Mellon University, and CyCare at Virginia Tech.

James was a student of Siddhartha Vanasthali School, Balaju. He was placed in the 7th position in Nepal in the SLC examination. He was selected by the school as a member of the team representing Nepal in the international event “The Children’s Assembly – Banner of Peace” held in Bulgaria in 1985. Later in 1995, he was selected by the Japanese government as a part of the team representing Nepal in an International Youth Exchange program in Japan. He is a recipient of the Colombo Plan Scholarship for his B.E. degree. Before coming for his graduate studies, in 1996, he also produced a solo music album, titled “Bhulidiun Ma Afulai”, with 12 songs (in English, Nepali and Newari) – all written, composed and sung by himself.

Current Research Grants

* James B. D. Joshi (PI), “A Trust-based Access Control Management Framework for Secure Information Sharing and Multimedia Workflows in Heterogeneous Environments”, NSF-CAREER (IIS), 2006-2010.
* James B. D. Joshi (PI), P. Krishnamurthy, D. W. Tipper, M. B. Spring, CIAG Cisco Equipment Grant Winners of Spring 2005.
* James B. D. Joshi , P. Krishnamurthy, D. W. Tipper, M. B. Spring, "Laboratory of Education and Research on Security Assured Information Systems (LERSAIS)," (Internal grant), 2005.
* James B. D. Joshi , P. Krishnamurthy, D. W. Tipper, M. B. Spring, "Partnership with the Information Resource Management College (IRMC) of the National Defense University (NDU). (DoD IASP Annex 1)," DoD IA Scholarship Program Grant.
* James B. D. Joshi , "An Adaptive Framework For Security-Assured Survivable Information Systems," CRDF, University of Pittsburgh, 2004-2006.
* M. B. Spring, P. Krishnamurthy (PI), D. Tipper, James B. D. Joshi , "A Curriculum in Security Assured Information Systems," NSF - Federal Cyber Service - Scholarship for Service" (2004-2006).

Sample Publication

* James B. D. Joshi, Elisa Bertino, Arif Ghafoor, "Analysis of Expressiveness and Design Issues for a Temporal Role Based Access Control Model," Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing, April-June 2005
* James B. D. Joshi, Elisa Bertino, Usman Latif, Arif Ghafoor, "Generalized Temporal Role Based Access Control Model," IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, Vol 7, No. 1, Jan, 2005.
* James B. D. Joshi, Rafae Bhatti, Elisa Bertino, Arif Ghafoor, “An Access Control Language for Multidomain Environments”, IEEE Internet Computing, Nov-Dec, 2004.
* James B. D. Joshi, Kevin Li, Husni Fahmi, Basit Shafiq, Arif Ghafoor, "A Model for Secure Multimedia Document Database System in a Distributed Environment", IEEE Transactions on Multimedia: Special Issue of on Multimedia Datbases, Vol. 4, No. 2, June , 2002.pages 215-234.
* James B. D. Joshi, Walid G. Aref, Arif Ghafoor and Eugene H. Spafford, "Security models for web-based applications," Communications of the ACM , 44, 2 (Feb. 2001), Page 38-44.

Awards/Honors

* Honored for faculty accomplishments in 2004 Honors Convocation of the University of Pittsburgh.
* Listed in “Who’s Who in America” and “Who’s Who in Science and Engineering.”
* Student Author Travel Award, International Conference on Multimedia and Expo, August 2000, New York
* Colombo Plan Scholarship for pursuing BE Computer Science & Engineering degree at MNREC
* Gold medal (given by School) for standing 7th in Nepal in SLC Examination