Tal Garfinkel is a research scientist at UC San Diego. He is the author of 29 academic publications and eleven patents. His work has received the distinguished paper and best paper awards at the Usenix Security Symposium, and best paper award at Usenix Annual Technical Conference. Garfinkel's work has been foundational to trusted computing (Terra), software defined networking (SANE), and introduced the technique of virtual machine introspection (VMI). In 2019, his paper on VMI received the NDSS "test of time" award, for "[opening] the floodgates on a tremendous amount of research and derivative tools" The paper is the most highly cited NDSS paper between 1995 and 2009. Garfinkel was the co-founder and program co-chair of the Usenix Workshop on Offensive Technology (WOOT). He has also been a lecturer and invited speaker in both academic and industry forums.