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Distinguished Research Fellow
Institute of Software Research (ISR) and Faculty Member of CyLab,
School of Computer Science
Carnegie Mellon University  

Office: TCS Building, Office# 423, Pittsburgh, PA
Office Phone: (412) 268-7899
Email: <MyFirstName>@cmu.edu



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Biography: Dr. Al-Shaer is a Distinguished Research Fellow at Institute of Software Research (ISR) in the School of Computer Science and Faculty Member of CyLab at Carnegie Mellon University. Dr. Al-Shaer has more than two decades as a researcher and educators in the field of Cybersecurity. Prior joining ISR/CMU, Prof. Al-Shaer was a Distinguished Career Professor at Information Networking Institute (INI) at Carnegie Mellon University and he was a Professor and the Founding Director of CyberDNA and NSF Cybersecurity Analytics and Automation  (CCAA) centers in the University of North Carolina Charlotte from 2009-2020.
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His area of research expertise includes (1) formal methods for security configuration verification, synthesis and hardening of enterprise, SDN, IoT and smart grid systems, (2) adaptive & automated cyber defense, (3) cyber and cyber-psychical resilience,
(4) data-driven cybersecurity analytics, and (5) cyber agility for attack deterrence and deception. Dr. Al-Shaer has edited/co-edited more than 9 books and book chapters, published more than 200 refereed journals and conferences papers in his area, and graduated more than 14 PhD students, who are working as tenure/tenure-track professors in academic institutions and researchers in industry lab.

He was designated by the Department of Defense (DoD) as a Subject Matter Expert (SME) on security analytics and automation in 2011, and he was awarded the IBM Faculty Award in 2012, and UNC Charlotte Faculty Research Award in 2013.  During his academic career, Prof. Al-Shaer received more than $20M research funding from government agencies including NSF, NSA, DARPA, ARO, ARL, AFRL, ONR, and industry including IBM, Cisco, Intel, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, BB&T, DTCC, Duke Energy, CIS, RTI, and others.

Dr. Al-Shaer was the ARO Autonomous Cyber Deception Workshop in 2018, General Chair of ACM Computer and Communication in 2009 and 2010, NSF Workshop in Assurable and Usable Security Configuration in 2008. Dr. Al-Shaer was also the Program Committee Chair for many conferences and workshops including ACM/IEEE SafeConfig 2013 and 2015, IEEE Integrated Management (IM) 2007, IEEE POLICY 2008. Al-Shaer has two accepted patents and several submitted ones. He also has lead several technology transfer projects. He is also an advisory board member for leading companies in cybersecurity automation. 

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Education: Ph.D. Computer Science; Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA (1998), Master of Science in Computer Science from Northeastern University, Boston, MA, USA (1993), and BSc in Computer Engineering from KFUPM, Saudi Arabia in (1990). 

Honors and Recognition
  • - Featured as DoD Subject Matter Expert in the area of Cybersecurity Configuration Analytics and Automation in DoD Information Assurance Newsletter, October 2011.
  • - Received IBM Research Faculty Award, 2013.
  • - Awarded the Faculty Research University Award at UNC Charlotte in 2014.
  • - Received ACM and IEEE Distinguished Service Professional Awards for several years.
  • - Featured Old Dominion University Distinguished Alumni Award in 2003
  • - NASA scholarship award (during my PhD) in 1995-1998.
Accomplishments Highlights
  • - Published 9 books and 230+ referred publications many of which well-cited research work in data-driven and formal-driven cybersecurity.
  • - Produced three patents and many technology transfer projects.
  • - The Founding PI for NSF Industry/University Collaborative Research Center on Cybersecurity Analytics and Automation, and Center of Cyber Defense and Network Assurability (CyberDNA) at University of North Carolina Charlotte.
  • - Funding: Awarded, as a PI or Co-PI, ~ $20M of research funding of which he was the lead PI for ~$11,100,000.
  • - Lead several Technology Transfers projects: AFRL (IP Mutation), Cisco (INSPEC for Firewall Testing), Intel (Firewall Policy Advisor), Duke Energy (AMI Threat Analyzer),   
    - Graduated 14 PhD students; 6 of them are tenure-track professors, and the others are in the industry