Among Needham's theoretical contributions is the development of the
Burrows–Abadi–Needham logic for
authentication, generally known as the
BAN logic. His
Needham–Schroeder (co-invented with
Michael Schroeder)
security protocol forms the basis of the
Kerberos authentication and
key exchange system. He also co-designed the
TEA and
XTEA encryption algorithms. He pioneered the technique of protecting passwords using a one-way hash function. In 1962, he joined the University of Cambridge's
Computer Laboratory, then called the Mathematical Laboratory, serving as the Head of the Laboratory from 1980 until 1995. He was made a
professor in 1981 and remained with the laboratory until his retirement in 1998. Between 1996 and 1998, Needham served as the pro-vice chancellor at the University of Cambridge. In 1997, he set up
Microsoft's UK-based
Research Laboratory. He was a founding
Fellow of
University College,
Cambridge, which became
Wolfson College. Needham was a longtime and respected member of the
International Association for Cryptologic Research, the
IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Security and Privacy, and the
University Grants Committee. He was made a fellow of the
Association for Computing Machinery in 1994.
Awards and honours Needham was elected a
Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1985 and a
Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng) in 1993. He was appointed
Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for his contributions to
computing in 2001. Needham held honorary doctorate degrees from the
University of Twente,
Loughborough University, and the
University of Kent.
Named in Needham's honour Needham has several awards named after him in his honour. The
British Computer Society established an annual
Roger Needham Award in 2004. The European Conference on Computer Systems (EuroSys) established the annual
Roger Needham PhD Award. It awards €2,000 to a PhD student from a European university whose thesis is regarded to be an exceptional, innovative contribution to knowledge in the computer systems area. Past winners have been: • 2021 Victor van de Veen (
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) • 2020 Michael Schwarz (Graz University of Technology) for his PhD thesis
Software-based Side-Channel Attacks and Defenses in Restricted Environments • 2019 Manolis Karpathiotakis, EPFL • 2018 Dennis Andriesse (
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) for his PhD thesis
Analyzing and Securing Binaries Through Static Disassembly • 2015 Cristiano Giuffrida (
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) for his PhD thesis
Safe and Automatic Live Update • 2014 Torvald Riegel (
Technische Universitaet Dresden), for his thesis
Software Transactional Memory Building Blocks • 2013 Asia Slowinska (
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) for her PhD thesis
Using Information Flow Tracking to Protect Legacy Binaries • 2012 Derek Murray, for his thesis
A Distributed Execution Engine Supporting Data-Dependent Control Flow • 2011 Jorrit Herder for
Building a Dependable Operating System: Fault Tolerance in MINIX 3 • 2010 Willem de Bruijn (
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) for
Adaptive Operating System Design for High Throughput I/O • 2009 Jacob Gorm Hansen (
DIKU) for
Virtual Machine Mobility with Self-Migration • 2008
Adam Dunkels (
SICS) for
Programming Memory-Constrained Networked Embedded Systems • 2007 Nick Cook (
Newcastle University) for
Middleware Support for Non-repudiable Business-to-Business Interactions • 2006 Oliver Heckmann (
TU Darmstadt) for
A System-oriented Approach to Efficiency and Quality of Service for Internet Service Providers ==Personal life==