N.C. A&T Names Sarrafzadeh Director of Center of Excellence in Cybersecurity Research, Education and Outreach

North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University announced Hossein Sarrafzadeh, Ph.D., a Distinguished Professor of computer science, has been selected as director of the Center of Excellence in Cybersecurity Research, Education and Outreach (CREO).

“Dr. Sarrafzadeh brings a wealth of knowledge in cybersecurity, including administration of cybersecurity organizations,” said Tonya Smith-Jackson, Ph.D., senior vice provost for academic affairs. “We look forward to the interdisciplinary collaborations to support research, education and outreach.”

Sarrafzadeh founded several cybersecurity research and operations centers in New Zealand, Australia and the United States. This includes New Zealand’s first Cybersecurity Research Center, in collaboration with Japan’s primary national research institute for information and communications, the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT), the Canadian Institute for Cybersecurity and a number of other universities, industry partners and research center. He also is the founder of the Centre for Computational Intelligence in Environmental Engineering and the Internet of Things, a collaboration between Unitec Institute of Technology and the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research in New Zealand.

Sarrafzadeh developed new academic programs in cybersecurity including a double doctorate in cybersecurity with Nara Institute of Science and Technology in Japan. He also has published more than 180 research papers and supervised more than 50 Ph.D. and master’s theses to completion, in addition to securing more than $15 million in funding in the past six years.

Before joining A&T, Sarrafzadeh was professor and chair of the Department of Cybersecurity at St. Bonaventure University and founder and director of the Western New York Cybersecurity Center. This followed his service as professor and director of the High Tech Transdisciplinary Research Network at Unitec Institute of Technology after seven years as head of computer science and information technology.

Sarrafzadeh earned his B.S. in computer science from Southwestern Oklahoma State University, M.S. in computer engineering from Orta Dogu Technical University and Ph.D. from the University of Wollongong.