Senior principal computer scientist recognized for contributions in cybersecurity and trustworthy systems.
SRI is proud to name Ashish Gehani as a 2025 SRI Fellow, the institute’s highest honor recognizing exceptional scientific achievement and lasting impact. Gehani, a member of SRI’s Computer Science Laboratory, is being honored for fundamentally advancing cybersecurity, data provenance, software specialization, and resilient systems.
For two decades, Gehani has transformed data provenance from an academic concept into a practical foundation for cyber threat detection, digital forensics, and trustworthy computing. His groundbreaking work with SPADE (Support for Provenance Auditing in Distributed Environments), the first scalable open-source provenance management platform, established a new paradigm for reasoning about system integrity and conducting cyber forensics. SPADE’s profound impact was formally recognized with the ACM/IFIP Middleware Test of Time Award, and the platform has become the standard reference for provenance research and operational deployment across a range of organizations.
“Dr. Gehani’s work exemplifies the best of SRI’s mission to create innovations that deliver impact at scale,” said Ulf Lindqvist, senior technical director at SRI and head of the SRI Fellows Award Program. “He hasn’t just advanced the science — he’s built the tools, shaped the ecosystem, and demonstrated how fundamental research can solve real-world challenges.”
Gehani’s contributions extend beyond SPADE. He led the OCCAM-v2 and Trimmer projects, state-of-the-art frameworks for software minimization that have redefined approaches to securing software by reducing attack surfaces. His technical leadership on DARPA’s CBMEN (Content-Based Mobile Edge Networking) and TC (Transparent Computing) programs demonstrated his exceptional ability to translate high-risk research into operational capabilities that strengthen national defense and infrastructure protection.
Beyond his technical innovations, Gehani is respected for his commitment to advancing the broader research community. He has mentored numerous researchers, fostered collaboration across SRI and with external partners, and helped shape the global cybersecurity research agenda.
The SRI Fellows Award Program recognizes individuals who have made exceptional contributions to their fields and to SRI’s mission of creating world-changing solutions. Fellows are selected based on the transformative nature of their work, their influence on their scientific communities, and their embodiment of SRI’s values of innovation and impact.
