Category: Educator
Name: Brian Ray
Title: Professor and Co-Director, Center for Cybersecurity and Privacy Protection Center
Company: Cleveland-Marshall College of Law
Why nominated: Brian Ray co-developed the Center for Cybersecurity and Privacy Protection at Cleveland State University, and now serves as co-director of the pioneering academic program. He further lends his experience in cybersecurity, information governance and data privacy to regional, state and national working groups, conferences and committees.
Profile: In 2016, Brian Ray co-founded the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law's Center for Cybersecurity and Privacy Protection at Cleveland State University in Ohio. The cutting-edge program became one of the first in the U.S. to combine course work from computer science, information management and law into an integrated curriculum.
Currently serving as the Center's co-director, Ray has also helped establish cybersecurity and privacy certificates for both JD and MLS students and added several new courses to the curriculum, including an applied Cybersecurity Practicum.
As part of a small planning group, Ray worked to secure a $200,000 grant for the creation of a new “IoT Collaborative” partnership between CSU, Case Western Reserve University, and key regional industries, with a focus on applied research on and product development of secure IoT devices.
In April 2017, Ray was selected to the first annual Yale Cyber Leaders Forum. Ray also co-founded the Cleveland eDiscovery, Data Security and Privacy Roundtable, an informal think tank of lawyers, judges and academics who meet to discuss electronic discovery, cybersecurity and data privacy issues.
Last year, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine appointed Ray as one of only two academic leaders to be named to the CyberOhio Advisory Board. In this role, Ray has helped draft new legislation regarding data breach class actions, and also developed a cyber training program for small and medium-sized businesses.
Ray co-chairs the Northeast Ohio CyberConsortium's Workforce Development Committee, and is a member of the Sedona Conference's Data Security and Privacy Liability Working Group and its International Electronic Information Management, Discovery and Disclosure Working Group.
In the last year alone, Ray organized three major conferences, including the inaugural Cybersecurity and Privacy Protection Conference, and the only official cybersecurity forum to take place at the Republican National Convention.
Published in April 2016, Ray's non-fiction book “Engaging with Social Rights: Procedure, Participation and Democracy in South Africa's Second Wave” provides a detailed analysis of the South African Constitutional Court's historical social rights decisions.
What colleagues say: “Brian has literally put Cleveland-Marshall and Cleveland State University on the map in the region, the state and the U.S. in cybersecurity and privacy. Before he co-founded the Cybersecurity and Privacy Protection Center in 2016, CSU had only a smattering of courses throughout the university and no organized programs in these areas. Less than one year later, we now have two certificate programs in the law school; a new, possibly first-in-the-nation interdisciplinary MS program coming online next year; and extensive collaboration among three different colleges working in this field, Engineering, Business and Law, in planning and developing new programs that break down the silos among technical, legal and business approaches to these issues.”
- Lee Fisher, Interim Dean, Cleveland-Marshall College of Law
