The Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society and the Banatao Institute (CITRIS) is pleased to announce that Sam King, associate professor of computer science at the University of California, Davis, has been named director of CITRIS at UC Davis, effective April 1.
A computer scientist and entrepreneur with deep experience in both academia and industry, King brings a vision focused on real-world impact and interdisciplinary collaboration. As director, he will expand CITRIS at UC Davis’s work at the intersection of research and application, particularly in areas such as agriculture, aviation, climate and digital health.
“I’m excited to help bring together the brilliant minds across the UC campuses to use novel research to solve society’s biggest problems,” said King.
King’s path to this role has been anything but linear. He left graduate school at Stanford to take advantage of the dot-com boom, and came back afterward to earn a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. He secured tenure as a professor at the University of Illinois, and then again left academia to launch his first startup, which was successfully acquired by Twitter. After stints in fraud prevention at two major tech companies — including a second startup later acquired by Stripe — he returned to academic life at UC Davis in 2017, and then departed once more for that second venture, ultimately arriving back at UC Davis in 2023.
Throughout his career, King has moved between academic and entrepreneurial spaces, driven by a passion for transforming novel research into tangible solutions. His pioneering work in computer security helped shape the security architecture of both Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox. Software developed in his lab to combat credit card fraud ran on over a billion devices, preventing an estimated $100 million in losses. Most recently, a 2023 CITRIS Seed Award enabled a pivot into digital health, deepening his connection to the CITRIS mission: using cutting-edge research to address society’s most urgent problems.
“UC Davis is uniquely positioned to support this mission,” said King. “We have historic strengths in agriculture, veterinary medicine, and biology, a growing engineering and science presence, and a top-tier medical school. Being in the Central Valley near Silicon Valley also gives us a strategic advantage for cross-sector collaboration and innovation.”
In his new role, King has two key priorities: accelerating deep tech startups — those that require years of foundational research before commercialization — and acting as a matchmaker for principal investigators (PIs) across the CITRIS campuses. By connecting complementary research efforts, he hopes to spark collaborations that lead to scalable, high-impact solutions.
“We’re excited to benefit from King’s expertise in innovation and entrepreneurship as we continue to grow the CITRIS Foundry and expand our impact across the UC system,” said Alexandre Bayen, director of CITRIS and the Banatao Institute, associate provost for the Berkeley Space Center, and Liao-Cho Innovation Endowed Chair and professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences and of civil and environmental engineering at UC Berkeley.
“We are grateful for the leadership provided by former director Saif Islam and look forward to working with Professor King to explore new areas of expertise and connections to industry and the greater Sacramento community,” Bayen said.
King succeeds M. Saif Islam, who is now serving as chair of the UC Davis Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.