Dr. Ernest McDuffie

Ernest L. McDuffie is a native of Atlantic City, New Jersey. He is a thought leader in the area of Cybersecurity awareness, education, training and workforce development. His current role as founder and CEO of The Global McDuffie Group (TGMG) a LLC formed in Virginia in November of 2014, is the culmination of 44 years of learning, experiences, leadership and service. TGMG is focused on the assessment and evaluation of cybersecurity, awareness, education, training, and workforce development environments. The highlight of his professional career to date is the past five years spent as the Lead for the National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education, (NICE). As a computer scientist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) he was selected to lead this all of government national campaign designed to improve the cyber behavior, skills, and knowledge of every segment of the population, enabling a safer cyberspace. During his tenure NICE grew from a little known Federal government focused component of a larger mostly classified program established under the Bush 43 administration called the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative (CNCI); into a nationally recognized initiative whose National Cybersecurity Workforce Framework (NCWF) has for the first time provider the nation with a comprehensive, current, and living decomposition of the complexities of today’s cybersecurity workforce. Under his leadership many productive public-private-partnerships were enabled with the importance of academia, industry, and government working together at the center of these efforts. Prior to this he held a number of important positions such as: the Associate Director of the National Coordination Office (NCO) for Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD); the Deputy Director for the Office of Naval Research (ONR)’s – Science and Technology for America’s Readiness (N-STAR) Initiative; and the Lead Program Director for the Federal Cyber Service: Scholarship for Service (SFS) Program at the National Science Foundation (NSF). Immediately after receiving his Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Computer Science from the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Florida in 1995, he spent seven years as an assistant professor of computer science at Florida State University (FSU). His professional career also includes positions as: Technical Coordinator for Cyber Security and Information Assurance Interagency Working Group (CSIA/IWG) and Software Design and Productivity Coordinating Group (SDP/CG) and Federal Agency Administration of Science and Technology Education and Research Community of Practice (FASTER/CoP) for ITS Corporation, a QinetiQ North America Company, in support of the National Coordination Office for Networking and Information Technology R&D from 8/06 to 2/08; Deputy Director, N-STAR Naval Research – Science & Technology for America’s Readiness at the Office of Naval Research from 8/04 to 8/06; Lead Program Director for the Federal Cyber Service: Scholarship for Service (SFS) Program at the Division of Undergraduate Education, National Science Foundation from 8/02 to 8/04; Programming/Operational Assistant for CaPE Project at the National Center for Atmospheric Research from 06/91 to 09/91; Computer Programmer/Analyst for the Federal Aviation Administration from 09/88 to 08/90; Associate Engineer Satellite Operations for Real-Time Telemetry Data Analysis at Lockheed Missiles and Space Company, Inc. from 01/80 to 01/81; and Analyst/Programmer as an Electronic Intelligence Operations Specialist for the US Air Force assigned to the National Security Agency from 06/77 to 11/79. Ernest is also a member of the following professional societies, IEEE Computer Society, ACM – Association for Computing Machinery, ISAI – International Society of Applied Intelligence, ASEE – American Association of Engineering Educators, and the Upsilon Pi Epsilon (Computer Science Honor Society). He currently serves on the following boards: Energetics Technology Center (ETC) Vice-Chairman of the Board of Directors, http://www.etcmd.org/; National Cybersecurity Institute at Excelsior College, http://www.NationalCybersecurityInstitute.org; Alliance for the Advancement of African-American Researchers in Computing (A4RC) Advisory Board, http://www.a4rc.org/; Mississippi State University Research & Technology Advisory Council (RTAC), http://www.msstate.edu/; National Association of Counties Cybersecurity Task Force, http://www.naco.org/; Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association (AFCEA) Cyber Committee, http://www.afcea.org/; Commonwealth of Virginia’s Semper Secure Board of Directors, http://www.sempersecure.org/; Advisory Board of HOLISTiC: Human & Organizational Learning – Integrated Studies in Cybersecurity (NSF Award#1241647); Advisory Board of the Alabama R11 EPSCoR program, http://www.tuskegee.edu/epscor_program.aspx; An internationally published author of technical articles, book chapters, and popular magazines features along with numerous panel and conference presentations as well as keynote addresses rounds out the activities of his professional career to date.