CCC Blog

Catalyzing the computing research community and enabling the pursuit of innovative, high-impact research.

Computing Community Consortium Blog

The goal of the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) is to catalyze the computing research community to debate longer range, more audacious research challenges; to build consensus around research visions; to evolve the most promising visions toward clearly defined initiatives; and to work with the funding organizations to move challenges and visions toward funding initiatives. The purpose of this blog is to provide a more immediate, online mechanism for dissemination of visioning concepts and community discussion/debate about them.

CISE Names Deputy Assistant Director

August 26th, 2011 / in Uncategorized / by Erwin Gianchandani

The NSF’s CISE Directorate today announced the appointment of Cynthia Dion-Schwarz as the Deputy Assistant Director, effective Sept. 12:

Dr. Dion-Schwarz will be joining us from the Department of Defense (DoD), where she served as the Director of Information Systems & Cyber Security Research in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering. In this position, she was responsible for the strategic oversight of the science and technology research in Information Technologies and for serving as the program executive for research programs in tactical networked communications, software initiatives, cyber security, and high performance computing. She also served as the DoD representative to the Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) Subcommittee of the National Science and Technology Council Committee on Technology. Dr. Dion-Schwarz was previously the Associate Director for Network Technologies in the Office of the Director of Information Systems. Her time at the Pentagon began when she was detailed as a Technical Advisor in the Office of Secretary of Defense, working to develop programs in communications networking and intelligence, from the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA).

Dr. Dion-Schwarz joined IDA in 1998 as a researcher into wireless communications networks and sensor systems. From 2004-2006, she was Assistant Director in the Science and Technology Division at IDA, where she built vigorous research programs in communications networking, data analysis and bio-informatics, exploiting her diverse background in experimental physics, engineering, and theoretical mathematics to advance cutting edge projects for Defense and the Intelligence Communities. During her early academic career, she conducted research at Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Naval Research Laboratory.

Dr. Dion-Schwarz received her BS in Physics and Mathematics in 1988 from George Mason University, and earned her PhD in Physics in 1995 from the University of Maryland at College Park. Dr. Dion-Schwarz is a member of the IEEE, ACM, and AWIS.