William H. Robinson, Ph.D., is the GTRI Deputy Director for Research for the Information and Cyber Sciences Directorate (ICSD). As ICSD Director, William leads the Information and Communications Laboratory (ICL) and the Cybersecurity, Information Protection, and Hardware Evaluation Research Laboratory (CIPHER), and manages research portfolios that span GTRI. 

Before joining GTRI, William served as Professor of Electrical Engineering and the Vice Provost for Academic Advancement at Vanderbilt University. There, he led the Security and Fault Tolerance Research Group, whose mission is to design, model, verify, and implement robust computing systems that positively benefit stakeholders with consumer, defense, industrial, and medical applications. He also co-led the Explorations in Diversifying Engineering Faculty Initiative (EDEFI). That initiative investigates the institutional, technical, social, and cultural factors that affect decision-making, career choices, and career satisfaction for doctoral students, doctoral candidates, postdoctoral researchers, and faculty from engineering and computing who have been marginalized by race and/or gender.

William has an expansive portfolio of research, publications, scholarly work, presentations, and awards. While at Vanderbilt University, he was involved in research for sponsors including the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), and the National Science Foundation (NSF). His research related to national security includes: (1) radiation-hardened electronics for satellite and missile systems, (2) hardware trust and assurance for integrated circuits and third-party intellectual property, (3) cyber security with intrusion detection systems, and (4) resilience for unmanned aerial systems and mobile ad hoc networks. In 2015 and in 2016, William served as the General Chair for the IEEE International Symposium on Hardware‑Oriented Security and Trust (HOST), which convenes a robust community of researchers from academia, government, and industry.

William holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University (FAMU) as well as a M.S. in Electrical Engineering and Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Georgia Tech.

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