Tsutomu Shimomura

Tsutomu Shimomura (www.takedown.com/bio/tsutomu.html)

Shimomura was born in Japan, but grew up in Princeton, New Jersey. Now he is living in San Diego. He then went to Princeton High School. He went to the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) for college. Caltech maintains strong emphasis on the natural sciences and engineering. After Caltech, he went to work at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he continued his hands-on education.

He then became a research scientist in the physics department at the University of California at San Diego, in 1989. In 1992, he testified before Congress on issues regarding the privacy and security of cell phones. In 1995, he assisted with tracking down the "computer outlaw" Kevin Mitnick. Shimomura and journalist John Markoff wrote a book called, Takedown, about the tracking. This book was later made into a movie that had the same name. Shimomura also worked for Sun Microsystems during the late 1900s.

Recently Shimomura has worked in the area of computer security research. He worked as a consultant with several government agencies on security and computer crime. He testified before Congress chaired by Edward Markey on issues surrounding the lack of security and privacy in cell phones, 1992.