Christopher Ramezan, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Cybersecurity, Coordinator, Business Cybersecurity Management Programs, Department of Management Information Systems and Supply Chain, West Virginia University
Dr. Christopher Ramezan is an Assistant Professor of Management Information Systems and Cybersecurity in the Chambers College of Business and Economics at West Virginia University. He currently serves as the Executive Director of the Cyber-Resilience Resource Center and Program Coordinator of the Business Cybersecurity Management M.S. and undergraduate minor programs.
Dr. Ramezan teaches courses in Network and Data Communications, Information Security Assurance Management, Cyber Data Analytics and Machine Learning, Enterprise Security Architecture, and Industrial Control Systems Security. His teaching emphasizes building hands-on security skills, the implementation of robust and effective cybersecurity architectures, and the integration of cybersecurity with business strategy.
His research focuses on machine learning and federated learning applications for cyber event detection, operational technology security, critical infrastructure protection, cyber workforce development, and cybersecurity operator burnout. His research has been published in top journals such as Computers Security, Remote Sensing, Transactions in GIS, and the Journal of Cybersecurity Education, Research, and Practice, among others. He has also presented at the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE), the Appalachian Institute for Digital Evidence (AIDE), and the Michigan Association of CPAs (MICPA) on topics related to data privacy, cybersecurity, critical infrastructure protection, fraud investigation, and generative AI.Dr. Ramezan has also served as a PI on over $1.6 million in externally funded research and training initiatives.
He is also an award-winning researcher and educator, having received honors such as the West Virginia Educator of the Year from the West Virginia American Legion, the WVU Foundation Award for Outstanding Teaching, recognition as a finalist for the West Virginia Professor of the Year, West Virginia’s 40 Under 40, and the Dean’s Distinction in both Teaching and Service. Additionally, he was also named the Academic Lead for the United States National Blue Team in the NATO Locked Shields exercise — the largest live-fire cyber defense exercise in the world — by the Joint Force Headquarters, United States Cyber Command.
Prior to joining academia, Dr. Ramezan worked in the cybersecurity field for nearly ten years in a variety of cybersecurity and IT roles, addressing a spectrum of cybersecurity challenges from developing organizational cybersecurity governance and strategy to managing identity and access management. He also holds over 20 industry cybersecurity certifications, including the CISSP, CISM, CASP, and CDPSE.He possesses a Ph.D. in Remote Sensing, specializing in computer vision and machine learning applications for analyzing multispectral and hyperspectral satellite data, lidar, and synthetic aperture radar.