Our multidisciplinary faculty are outstanding scholars, teachers and researchers who offer a wealth of expertise in cybersecurity, e-Discovery, cybercrime, privacy and data protection, cyber risk management, and rising system vulnerabilities that can affect business.
Law Faculty
BRIAN RAY, J.D., CLEVELAND State University COLLEGE OF LAW, DIRECTOR
Leon M. and Gloria Plevin Professor of Law & Director, Cybersecurity and Privacy Protection Center, Cleveland State University College of Law
Professor Brian Ray has extensive experience in information governance, cybersecurity and data privacy. He co-founded and directs the Center for Cybersecurity and Pivacy Protection and edits the Center-sponsored SSRN Cybersecurity, Data Privacy and eDiscovery eJournal. Ray also co-founded the Cleveland eDiscovery, Data Security and Privacy Roundtable, an informal group of lawyers, judges and academics that meets monthly to discuss issues surrounding electronic discovery, cybersecurity and data privacy issues. Ray's research focuses on security and privacy regulation, national and international jurisdiction over data, and data governance, collection and use policies at the municipal, county and state levels. He is part of a small team of researchers that in 2018 established the Internet of Things Collaborative (IoTC) with a $1.75 million Digital Excellence Grant by the Cleveland Foundation. He serves as the IoTC Cybersecurity Industry Liaison working with faculty on both campuses and industry to develop applied research and education programs related to IoT security.
In 2016 Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine appointed Ray to the CyberOhio Advisory Board. He 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. He was selected to participate in the Yale University Cyber Leaders Forum in 2017, and SC Magazine named him one of three Outstanding Cybersecurity Educator in the 2017 Reboot Leadership Awards.
Ray also is an expert in comparative and international law. His book, Engaging with Social Rights: Participation, Procedure and Democracy in South Africa's Second-Wave provides a comprehensive analysis of the South African Constitutional Court's social rights decisions. He was a Fulbright Scholar in South Africa and has published extensively on comparative constitutional law and social rights.
JONATHAN WITMER-RICH, J.D., CLEVELAND State University COLLEGE OF LAW
Professor Jonathan Witmer-Rich is an expert on privacy and surveillance, including the legislative and regulatory frameworks governing surveillance such as Title III, the Stored Communications Act, and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). His research and teaching examines emerging forms of government and private-sector surveillance in the context of both national security and law enforcement, in particular the NSA’s post-9/11 programs. He has written about the proper legal frameworks for new forms of surveillance, including a series of articles on delayed notice search warrants—a form of covert searching authorized in the USA PATRIOT Act. His articles have appeared in the Florida Law Review, Criminal Law and Philosophy, the Pepperdine Law Review, and the Case Western Reserve Law Review.
Professor Witmer-Rich gained substantial experience with these issues working in the Federal Public Defender's Office, where he litigated questions involving the Classified Information Procedures Act, rendition, and numerous forms of government surveillance. He also reviewed and analyzed classified government intelligence representing several Guantanamo Bay detainees in habeas corpus proceedings in the D.C. District Court. Prior to that he worked extensively with what is now known as the “Enron Corpus”—the large database of documents disclosed by Enron following bankruptcy— while representing the Royal Bank of Scotland in the Enron securities class action and related litigation at Jones Day.
In 2010 he received an Ohio Faculty Innovator Award from the Chancellor of the Ohio Board of Regents for innovative and cost-saving use of digital classroom materials. Professor Witmer-Rich currently serves as counsel to the Criminal Rules Committee of the Ohio Commission on the Rules of Practice and Procedure.
Professional Experience and Education: law clerk for Judge M. Blane Michael, U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, and Judge Joseph R. Goodwin, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia; litigation associate, Jones Day; research and writing attorney, Federal Public Defender’s Office; J.D., magna cum laude, University of Michigan School of Law, Maurice Weigle Scholarship Award, Associate & Contributing Editor, Michigan Law Review; B.A., Goshen College.
COMPUTER SCIENCE FACULTY
Sathish Kumar, PH.D., Washkewicz College of Engineering
Sathish Kumar is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Cleveland State University. His research interests are in Cybersecurity, Machine Learning, Distributed Systems and related applications. Dr. Kumar has served on the program committees of numerous international conferences and as a reviewer for IEEE Transactions, including IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, IEEE Transactions on Cloud Computing and IEEE Transactions on Services Computing. Dr. Kumar has published more than 50 technical research papers in journals and international conference proceedings.
Research Interests: Cybersecurity, Data Science and Analytics, Intelligent Cyber Physical Human Systems, Smart Cities and Disaster Resilience & Emergency Management
HAODONG WANG, PH.D., WASHKEWICZ COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING
Dr. Haodong Wang’s research focuses on techniques for achieving security and privacy in cyber-physical systems, networks, and in wireless or mobile operating systems. His work on open-source public-key cryptosystem implementation has been adopted by more than twenty renowned research institutes and universities around the world. An Assistant Professor in Cleveland State’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Dr. Wang’s research has been supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF). He has served on the program committees of numerous international conferences and as a reviewer for IEEE Transactions, including IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security. Dr. Wang has undertaken extensive investigations into cryptography primitives for embedded and recourse-constrained systems. His research interests extend to information retrieval and efficient data management in wireless networked embedded systems, wireless computing protocols (IEEE 802.11/4G/LTE), and cognitive radio.
Background: Ph.D., Computer Science, College of William and Mary; M.S., Electrical Engineering, Penn State University; B.E. degree in Electronic Engineering from Tsinghua University. Previously, Assistant Professor, Department of Math and Computer Science, Virginia State University.
CHANSU YU (CHAN), PH.D., WASHKEWICZ COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING
Dr. Chansu Yu, a cybersecurity specialist, chairs CSU’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. His 27 years of experience in various aspects of networked systems, cluster and cloud computing included deep attention to their security requirements and deficiencies.
Before joining CSU, Dr. Yu worked in industry for 13 years. His current research focuses primarily on security in wireless communications, cyber-physical systems, and in aspects of computer hardware. His cybersecurity research has received substantial financial support from ETRI and NSF, and he has presented his research at major peer-reviewed conferences that include IEEE MILCOM 2014.
Dr. Yu has also been keenly interested in security education, receiving a DUE award (2013~2016) for this work. As Co-Chair of the Network of the Future (NOF) conference in 2013, and as a founding member and Co-chair of IEEE PerCom workshop on Pervasive Wireless networking for eight years, Dr. Yu continues to exercise national leadership in cybersecurity research and security education.
Background: Ph.D., Computer Engineering, Pennsylvania State University; M.S. and B.S., Electrical Engineering, Seoul National University, S. Korea.
BUSINESS FACULTY
RAYMOND HENRY, MONTE AHUJA COLLEGE OF BUSINESS
Raymond M. Henry is the Interim Chair of the Information Systems Department, Director of Business Analytics and associate professor in the Monte Ahuja College of Business at Cleveland State University. As information technologies become more pervasive effectively managing cybersecurity and privacy requires understanding both technical and behavioral responses to these concerns. Dr. Henry’s research takes a socio-technical perspective that looks at the interactions and interdependencies between social and technical systems. He has applied this to explore topics related to IT governance, risk management, and information systems development. His research has been published in premier journals including Information Systems Research, Journal of Management Information Systems, Communications of the ACM, Journal of the AIS, and Journal of Operations Management, among others.
Charles McElroy, PhD, MONTE AHUJA COLLEGE OF BUSINESS
Charles McElroy is an Assistant Professor in Information Systems at Cleveland State University. Professor McElroy earned his PhD in Information Systems at Case Western Reserve University in 2017. Upon graduation, he won a national competition sponsored by the Office for the Director of National Intelligence, and pursued PostDoctoral research at the California Institute of Technology (Center for Data Driven Discovery). There he studied how to identify, assess and mitigate bias in big data research. Upon the completion of this PostDoc, he won a Fulbright Fellowship to conduct research in Cybersecurity at Oxford University, UK. After this fellowship, he was invited back to Caltech where he continued to pursue cutting-edge research for various Federal Sponsors. In 2019, he won a ODNI Design competition in the area of truth assessment. In the Fall of 2021, he lead a team at CSU which was a co-winner of the Dean's Corner Stone Challenge. This competition seeks to promote student professional development while promoting outreach to the local business community.
Professor McElroy is currently focused on a variety of research topics in Data Science, Machine Learning and immersive data visualizations.