Lance Hoffman

Lance Hoffman

Lance J. Hoffman is Distinguished Research Professor of Computer Science and Director of the Cyber Security Policy and Research Institute at The George Washington University (GW) in Washington, DC. He initiated and taught the first course on computer security in a regular accredited degree program in the United States at the University of California, Berkeley in 1970 and established the computer security program there and at GW and led GW’s to national recognition as a Center of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance Education.

He is the author or editor of numerous articles and five books on computer security and privacy. His teaching innovations also include multidisciplinary courses on electronic commerce and network security and the development of a portable educational network for teaching computer security. He also directs the Defense Department and National Science Foundation computer security scholarship programs at GW.

A Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery, Dr. Hoffman has served on a number of Advisory Committees including those of the Center for Democracy and Technology, the Federal Trade Commission, and the ACM Conference on Computers, Freedom, and Privacy. He currently serves on the Department of Homeland Security Advisory Committee on Data Privacy and Integrity, and occasionally testifies before Congress on security and privacy-related issues.

Dr. Hoffman was co-editor of a special section of Communications of the Association for Computing Machinery on electronic voting in 2000 and wrote one of the early reports on issues with electronic voting in 1987, funded by a grant from the Markle Foundation.

Dr. Hoffman received his B. S. in mathematics from Carnegie Mellon University and his M. S. and Ph. D. from Stanford University in computer science.

(In May 2006, he was elected to the Town Council of Chevy Chase, Maryland. His wife, Mary Anne Hoffman, is author of the Town architectural tour booklet now given to all residents and the executive producer of “Chevy Chase, Maryland: A Streetcar to Home”, a 2006 documentary on the history of one of the first streetcar suburbs in the United States.)