Richard DeMillo

​Richard Allan (Rich) DeMillo (born January 26, 1947) is a computer scientist, cybersecurity expert, educator, and executive who holds the Charlotte B. and Roger C. Warren Chair in Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

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Rich joined Georgia Tech in 2002 from Hewlett-Packard, where he served as the company's first Chief Technology Officer. He also held executive positions with Telcordia Technologies (formerly known as Bell Communications Research) and the National Science Foundation. After serving as the John P. Imlay Dean of Computer Sciences for seven years, from 2002 to 2009, he founded and directed Georgia Tech's Center for 21st Century Universities, a living laboratory for fundamental change in higher education. He then founded and served as Interim Chair of the School of Cybersecurity and Privacy at Georgia Tech's College of Computing. 

Rich’s academic research includes over 100 articles, books, and patents in computer science and cybersecurity. He works at the intersection of fundamental problems in digital technology and the public impact of those technologies. His 1979 paper "Social Processes and Proofs of Theorems and Programs" has been reprinted dozens of times and was recently cited as one of the 50 most influential papers in computer science.

As an educator, he founded and led the Center for 21st Century Universities (C21U), a living laboratory for fundamental change in higher education. He was named Lumina Foundation Fellow, citing his creation of C21U as a "unique institution.". His book, Revolution in Higher Education (MIT Press, 2015), won the 2016 PROSE Award from the American Association of Publishers. The Commission on Creating the Next in Education, which he co-chaired, won the 2019 Association for Educational Communications and Technology Achievement Award. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Association for Computing Machinery.

Rich has served on boards of many public and private companies and non-profit organizations, including San Francisco’s Exploratorium and the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Foundation.

Rich was born and raised in Hibbing, Minnesota. He received his Bachelor's degree in mathematics from the University of St Thomas in St Paul, Minnesota, in 1969 and his Ph.D. in information and computer sciences from Georgia Tech in 1972.​