Parisa Tabriz

Early life

Tabriz was born to an Iranian-immigrant father, a doctor, and a Polish-American mother, a nurse. She grew up in the suburbs of Chicago and is the older sister of two brothers. Neither of her parents were computer literate and Tabriz didn't encounter the world of computing until her first year at university.

Education

Tabriz initially enrolled at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to study engineering, but soon became interested in computer science instead. She completed Bachelor's and master's degrees at the university and did research in wireless networking security and attacks on privacy enhancing technologies. She was also an active member of a student club interested in website security, which she joined because her own website was being hacked, and which introduced her to the field of internet security.

Career

Tabriz was offered a summer internship with Google's security team while at college, and joined the company a few months after her graduation in 2007. As of 2016, she heads a team of 30 experts responsible for the security of Google Chrome. She is also responsible for training Google staff interested in moving into the internet security field.

While preparing to attend a conference, she decided to use the job title "Security Princess" rather than the conventional "Information Security Engineer" as it seemed more interesting. This title is now on her business cards.

In order to inspire younger people to enter her field, Tabriz mentors young teens at an annual science convention in Las Vegas.