Laurent Yamen Njilla

Laurent Yamen Njilla holds a heightened appreciation for the freedoms and resources that we at American universities enjoy. He has a unique understanding of the value of educational institutions such as FIU because he lived through conflicts that marked his undergraduate education in his native Cameroon. There, students protested the worsening physical conditions on campus and increasing barriers to access, often the result of financial abuses within the government. In some cases their demands were met with military and police action.

These experiences make all the sweeter Laurent’s accomplishments in the United States, where he put himself through school to earn a master’s degree at another Florida university and then took an IT job at Kimberly-Clark in Atlanta and a systems analyst position with the City of Miami Beach to help his family back home.

At FIU, Laurent’s groundbreaking research looked at game theory as a means to help devise new ways to manage and share a variety of wireless resources in a safe and protected environment. That type of work helped him land a job with the cybersecurity defense team at the Air Force Research Laboratory in Ohio, where he will head shortly.