The Barbara Lazarus Award for Graduate Student and Junior Faculty Mentoring

The Barbara Lazarus Award will be given again in 2014. Below is the information on the most recent recipient.

2012 Barbara Lazarus Award Recipient

Dena Haritos Tsamitis

Director, Information Networking Institute; Director of Education, Training and Outreach, Carnegie Mellon CyLab

Dena Haritos Tsamitis heads the Information Networking Institute, a global, interdisciplinary department within the College of Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. She oversees the INI graduate programs in information networking, information security technology and management, information technology and information technology strategy, as well as a new executive program in information assurance. Under her leadership, the INI has offered its programs in global locations, including Athens, Greece; Kobe, Japan; and Lisbon and Aveiro, Portugal. More recently, she led the innovative design of bicoastal programs in collaboration with Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley that positioned the INI to offer three new master's degrees in information technology in the areas of mobility, information security and software management.

Dena also directs education, training and outreach for CyLab. She leads the MySecureCyberspace initiative to raise "cyberawareness" in Internet users of all ages through a portal, game and curriculum. She serves as the principle investigator on three federally funded grants for educational programs that support full-tuition scholarships for students and workforce development initiatives in information assurance.

In the broad campus community, she has served on Carnegie Mellon's strategic planning committee for Globalization and International Initiatives, the university's faculty-led International Committee and the campus Fulbright Committee. Dena established two graduation student organizations, Women@INI (WINI) and Graduate Organization@INI (GOINI). She also founded the INI Alumni Leadership Council to gain alumni insight and guidance on achieving departmental goals.

Dena has spoken at numerous events on the topics of cybersecurity and transnational university partnerships. She is a member of several advisory councils, including the Education Advisory Council for the U.S. Air Force's Cyber Innovation Center, the Advisory Board for the Master of Software Assurance Curriculum and the Alumni Advisory Board for the Executive Doctorate at University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education. She has been awarded the 2012 Barbara Lazarus Award for Graduate Student and Junior Faculty Mentoring from Carnegie Mellon, honors from The European Art Center in 2009 and the 2008 Women of Influence Award from Alta Associates and CSO Magazine.

Dena holds an Ed.D. in higher education management from the University of Pennsylvania, an M.S. in education from Duquesne University and a B.S. in information science from the University of Pittsburgh.