About

I work on the problem of keeping hospitals and their patients safe from cyber threats, which turns out to be considerably harder than it sounds. Medical devices were not designed with the assumption that someone might try to compromise them, and hospital networks were not built for a world where everything plugged into them is a computer. Both assumptions have aged poorly.

I’m completing my PhD at the Tufts Security & Privacy Lab, where my dissertation focuses on usable security for medical devices and hospital networks. The core question: how do you build security that the people who actually use it — clinicians, technicians, hospital IT — can work with rather than around? After graduation in May 2026, I’m joining Philips as a Software Development Security Engineer on their patient monitoring platform, applying what I’ve spent years researching to the systems that actually sit at bedsides. I plan to continue publishing.

Guiding Principles

Mission-Oriented

I have been lucky enough to have had mentors who instilled in me the importance of being mission-driven. I have internalised this over the years, ensuring that my work delivers on my personal mission: to enable clinicians to focus on delivering patient care by making security a force multiplier for safety and reliability.

Tikkun Olam

In Judaism, the concept of "tikkun olam"—literally, "repairing the world"—serves as a call to a higher purpose. I hope that my work positively impacts society by minimising security risks and, in turn, protecting the people who rely on critical systems.

Pragmatic Design

One of my most influential mentors impressed upon me that good design begets adoption, and, more importantly, that poor design will surely kill it. I believe that usability and practicality are paramount. Security measures, after all, are only effective if they are properly implemented and used.

Contact & Links

Email: rthomp06 [at] cs [dot] tufts [dot] edu
CV: Academic CV · Industry Resume
LinkedIn: ronthompsoniii
GitHub: zenw00kie
Google Scholar: Profile

Fun Fact

The world's first webcam was invented not with a grand vision of connecting the globe, but out of a desperate need to avoid disappointment. In 1991, computer scientists at Cambridge University, tired of walking to their break room only to find an empty coffee pot, pointed a camera at it and wrote a program to broadcast the live image to their desktop computers, allowing them to check the coffee level before making the trip. Learn more.