Appointment of Deputy Assistant Director for CISE

CISE is very pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Cynthia Dion-Schwarz as Deputy Assistant Director, effective September 12, 2011.

Dr. Dion-Schwarz will be joining us from the Department of Defense (DoD), where she served as the Director of Information Systems & Cyber Security Research in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering. In this position, she was responsible for the strategic oversight of the science and technology research in Information Technologies and for serving as the program executive for research programs in tactical networked communications, software initiatives, cyber security, and high performance computing. She also served as the DoD representative to the Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) Subcommittee of the National Science and Technology Council Committee on Technology. Dr. Dion-Schwarz was previously the Associate Director for Network Technologies in the Office of the Director of Information Systems. Her time at the Pentagon began when she was detailed as a Technical Advisor in the Office of Secretary of Defense, working to develop programs in communications networking and intelligence, from the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA).

Dr. Dion-Schwarz joined IDA in 1998 as a researcher into wireless communications networks and sensor systems. From 2004-2006, she was Assistant Director in the Science and Technology Division at IDA, where she built vigorous research programs in communications networking, data analysis and bio-informatics, exploiting her diverse background in experimental physics, engineering, and theoretical mathematics to advance cutting edge projects for Defense and the Intelligence Communities. During her early academic career, she conducted research at Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Naval Research Laboratory.

Dr. Dion-Schwarz received her BS in Physics and Mathematics in 1988 from George Mason University, and earned her PhD in Physics in 1995 from the University of Maryland at College Park. Dr. Dion-Schwarz is a member of the IEEE, ACM, and AWIS.