The Alumni Magazine for Worcester Polytechnic Institute. (WPI)
Issue link: http://wpialumnimag.epubxp.com/i/456562
Winter 2015 35 00000111100011101010111110000000000001011 00000011110001110101011111000000000000101 10000001111000111010101111100000000000010 11000000111100011101010101011010010110000 00111100011101010111110000000000001011000 000111100011101010111110000000000v0010110 00000111100011101010111110000000000010110 00111101110111100011101010111110000 risky activity, which is driving. We think the same approach needs to be taken when go- ing online." Like the crumple zone in a Chevrolet or Toyota's frame, Invincea creates a virtual con- tainer for a user's email and browser. Any link or attachment is opened in this walled-off en- vironment, ensuring that any malicious code is contained before it can spread. A proprietary "malware detection engine" monitors the con- tainer, and the software neutralizes any threats the engine detects, sending information about them to a central server, which helps make the system even stronger. It's a simple but ingenious approach that has earned Ghosh and Invincea two U.S. pat- ents. Invincea's software is now used by federal agencies, defense contractors, businesses large and small, and Dell, which now ships it pre- installed on every commercial machine the PC giant sells. Today, Invincea's software is run at over 20,000 frms in 112 countries, with over a million individual users—a number that was on track to grow to 20 million by the end of 2014. "I'll tell you, as an engineer, it's very satisfy- ing to give birth to an idea, develop it, and then see it in production on a large scale," Ghosh says. "I think we're all motivated by that. We like to solve hard problems, and we like to see our work used by the people." Ghosh still speaks with a trace of a Southern accent, a relic of his early childhood in North Car- olina. His family later moved to Michigan and Pennsylvania, as his father, Kalyan Ghosh, was recruited by several universities. In the late 1980s, the elder Ghosh accepted an administrative position at Worcester State University (he would later become president, serving for 10 years). "My family moved to Worcester at the same time I was looking at colleges, so I said, 'Well, I'll look at WPI,'" Ghosh says. "I went to WPI and just fell in love. And my family was so close by, I could go home, do laundry, and get a home-cooked meal once a week!" Aside from the convenience, Ghosh says, it was the physical beauty of WPI's campus that ap- pealed to him, as well as the emphasis on project-based learning. Ghosh had been a math whiz in high school, and he enjoyed solving tough problems, so he decided to major in electrical engineering. The course work was more than enough to supply the challenge he was looking for. "WPI was a comfortable place to learn a very hard subject," he says. "You're not adequately prepared for a U.S. engineering education, coming out of a U.S. high school—it's a big jump. It was not an easy transition. But everyone is sort of in the same boat at WPI, we're all in engineer- ing, math, and science, so you're surrounded by people who have similar workloads, which is