Blair Taylor

Biography

Dr. Blair Taylor is Director of the Center for Interdisciplinary and Innovation Cybersecurity (Cyber4All) at Towson University. Dr Taylor is an award-winning educator with 20+ years’ experience in academia. She is a national expert in cybersecurity education and curriculum development and worked with NSA’s College of Cyber as a Subject Matter Expert on long-term strategies to increase the pipeline of qualified students and build the nations’ cyber workforce. 

As a Professor in the Department of Computer and Information Sciences at Towson University, she has received over $12 million of external funding. Her projects include Security Injections @ Towson, which provides security modules for integrating security across the curriculum and is a national model for teaching secure coding to introductory programming students, and SPLASH, which offers Secure Programming Logic for college credit to high school girls. 

Dr. Taylor has received the University System of Maryland Regents Award for Teaching, the Fisher College of Science and Mathematics Outstanding Faculty Award, the Business Outreach Award and has been recognized as one of 5O Women to Watch by the Baltimore Sun Magazine and one of Maryland’s top female tech leaders by MDBIZNews. She holds a B.A. in Mathematical Science and an M.S. in Computer Science from Johns Hopkins University and a doctorate in Applied Information Technology from Towson University. 

Additionally, Dr. Taylor is the Co-Executive Director and Co-Founder of SecurEd (www.secured.team), a not-for-profit startup organization focused on helping academic institutions build a cyber-ready workforce.

Funded Grants:

• PI, “Cybersecurity AI,” Funded by: National Science Foundation (NSF), $530,000 2024-2026.
• PI, “The NCAE Cybersecurity Curriculum Commission: A Strategic Approach to Building High-Quality, High-Impact Cybersecurity Curriculum for the Nation,” Funded by: National Security Agency (NSA), $1.1 million 2024-2025 (Option Year awarded)
• PI, “Building Cyber AI Knowledge Areas for Post-secondary Programs”, Funded by National Science Foundation (NSF), $534,718
• PI, “2021-5: Establish National CAE-C Curriculum Committee”, Funded by National Security Agency (NSA), $2,262,000, 2021-2024.
• PI, “Value Returning Methods: Increasing the Number of Women in Computing at Towson,” Funded by: Center for Inclusive Computing, Northeastern University, $51,640, 2021-23
• Co-Pi, “National Center of Academic Excellence (CAE) Northeast Regional Hub,” with Capitol Tech and Mohawk Community College, Funded by National security Agency (NSA), $74,632, 2020-2022.
• Co-PI, “CyberCorps: Scholarship for Service at Towson University,” Funded by: National Science Foundation, $3,972,413, 2017-2024.

Selected Publications and Presentations:

• Ubah, C., Zaleppa, P., Taylor, B., Kaza, S., (2024), “Evaluation of AI Models to Update Cybersecurity Curriculum,” Journal of The Colloquium for Information Systems Security Education, 11(1), pp 8
• Taylor, B., Kaza,S. , Zaleppa, P. (2021), “CLARK: A Design Science Research Project for Building and Sharing High-Quality Cybersecurity Curricula,” IEEE Security & Privacy, Volume 19, Issue 5
• Ngwum, N.,Raina, S.,Aguon, S., Taylor, B., and Kaza,S. (2020), “A Model for Security Evaluation of Digital Libraries: A Case Study on a Cybersecurity Curriculum Library,” Journal of The Colloquium for Information Systems Security Education, 7(1)
• Kaza, S., Taylor, B., and Sherbert, K. (2018), “Hello, World!-Code Responsibly,” IEEE Security and Privacy, 17(1)
• Siraj, A., B. Taylor, S. Kaza, S. Ghafoor (2015), “Integrating Security in the Computer Science Curriculum,” ACM Inroads, 6(2), pp 77-81
• Taylor, B., Kaza, S., Siraj, A., Ghafoor, S. (2015), “CReST Workshop: Teaching Add-On Security Modules in Computing Curriculum,” Women in Cybersecurity Conference, Atlanta, GA
• Raina, S., Kaza, S. , Taylor, B. (2014), “Segmented and Interactive Modules for Teaching Secure Coding: A Pilot Study,” International Conference on e-Learning e-Education and Online Training(ELeOt), Bethesda, MD
• Taylor, B. and Kaza, S. (2014), “Teaching Secure Coding in Introductory Programming Courses,” The 18th Colloquium for Information Systems Security Education (CISSE), San Diego, CA
• Taylor, B., Kaza, S., Hawthorne, E., (2014), “Introducing Secure Coding in CS0, CS1, and CS2,” ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE 2014), Atlanta, GA, ACM Press
• Nance, K and Taylor, B. (2012), Teaching High School Students to Code Responsibly, Proceedings of the 16th Colloquium for Information Systems Security Education (CISSE), Lake Buena Vista, FL.
• Perez, L, Cooper, S., Hawthorne, E., Wetzel, S., Taylor, B., et al. (2011), Information assurance education in two- and four-year institutions, Proceedings of the 16th annual conference reports on Innovation and technology in computer science education - working group reports (ITiCSE), Darmstadt, Germany