Dr. Dena Haritos Tsamitis is an influential educator, mentor and strategic leader with more than two decades of experience building interdisciplinary engineering programs and initiatives, industry partnerships and inclusive global communities that continue to shape the next generation of the engineering and cybersecurity workforce.
Dena has led a trajectory of growth and continual transformation at Carnegie Mellon University’s (CMU) Information Networking Institute (INI) where she has served as director since 2004. Dena has built and scaled the INI from a single-degree program into a world-class institution that educates and develops engineers through technical master’s degree programs in information networking, security, mobile and IoT engineering and AI engineering. Dena was the first recipient of CMU’s prestigious Barbara Lazarus Professorship in Information Networking and she is also a founding director of Carnegie Mellon CyLab, the university-wide security and privacy research institute.
Throughout her career, Dena has established programs, policies and practices fundamental to the advancement of diversity, equity and inclusion to create welcoming environments while actively
addressing bias and discrimination, and has been a mentor and advocate for many students and alumni, regularly collaborating on engagement initiatives for young girls and women across the industry. In 2005, Dena co-founded INI’s student organization, Women@INI (WINI), to address the unique challenges faced by women in the male-dominated field of engineering.
Dena has established the INI’s partnership with Alta Associates’ Executive Women’s Forum (EWF) that offered invaluable networking and mentorship opportunities to develop women leaders in information security and privacy. Because of Dena’s unwavering commitment to mentor and support women and other underrepresented groups in technology, the INI has partnerships and sponsorship with many leading organizations and conferences in addition to the EWF, including the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, Women in Cybersecurity (WiCys), Minorities in Cybersecurity (MiC), The Diana Initiative, the Society of Women Engineers and Tapia.
Dena was named 2018 Woman in IT Security Power Player by SC Magazine and received the 2008 Women of Influence Award, presented by Alta Associates and CSO Magazine. CMU honored Dena with the 2012 Barbara Lazarus Award for Graduate Student and Junior Faculty Mentoring.