Director, Information Networking Institute
Barbara Lazarus Professor in Information Networking
Founding Director of Education, Training, and Outreach, CyLab
Carnegie Mellon University
Director of the College of Engineering’s Information Networking Institute (INI) at Carnegie Mellon, Dr. Dena Haritos Tsamitis has used her role as an influential educator and strategic leader to transform engineering education.
As Director since 2004, Dena has built interdisciplinary engineering programs and global communities, while passionately advocating for an inclusive engineering field. Dena has led a trajectory of growth that includes establishing the first CMU degree to be offered entirely at a global location in Athens, Greece. She built on this success by expanding Carnegie Mellon programs in Japan, Portugal, and Rwanda, and developing the university’s first bicoastal degree programs, which bridge the Pittsburgh campus with CMU in Silicon Valley.
Today, the INI offers five degree programs that prepare graduates to build, innovate and advance the connected technologies that support every aspect of society. These programs span information networking, information security, artificial intelligence (AI) engineering and mobile and Internet of Things (IoT) engineering, and include the INI’s trailblazing MS in Information Security, ranked the #1 U.S. cybersecurity graduate program.
Under Dena’s leadership, CMU has earned three federal designations as a National Center of Academic Excellence for cybersecurity defense, research, and operations. Since 2002, Dena has served as principal investigator (PI) on the National Science Foundation (NSF) CyberCorps® Scholarship for Service (SFS), and the Department of Defense (DoD) Cyber Scholarship Academy (CSA), securing over $28M in federal funding under these programs.
Dena gives back as a thought leader and member of the boards of influential organizations. Her contributions have been recognized by several awards: 2018 Women in IT Security Power Player; 2008 Alta Associates and CSO Magazine Women of Influence Award in Information Security; CMU’s 2012 Barbara Lazarus Award for Graduate Student and Junior Faculty Mentoring; and the 2023 Smart 50 Award. In 2017, Dena was the inaugural recipient of the endowed Barbara Lazarus Professorship in Information Networking.
In 2025, Dena received two prestigious honors: CMU selected her to win the 2025 Doherty Award for Sustained Excellence in Education, a career-defining achievement that recognizes her extensive contributions to and innovations within engineering education; and the Greek America Foundation named her one of the Greek America Foundation’s Best and Brightest Award 2025.
