Deborah Frincke

Dr. Deborah A. Frincke is an American computer scientist specializing in computer security. She is the former Chief Scientist for Cyber Security at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, one of the United States Department of Energy national laboratories, and is the director of research for the National Security Agency.

As Research Director, Frincke also serves as the NSA Science Advisor and the NSA Innovation Champion. She also serves as the NSA Science Advisor and the NSA Innovation Champion. Prior to becoming the Director of Research, Frincke led global education and training for the agency as Associate Director for Education and Training (ADET). While serving as ADET, Frincke also served as Commandant of National Cryptologic School, where she established the first NSA Cyber College and launched the GenCyber Program. In these roles, she led a worldwide multiservice military and civilian, corporate-level learning organization while also providing executive steering of four Service schools and 20 satellite campuses across the global enterprise. Before joining NSA in 2011, Frincke had a threefold career encompassing academia, Chief Scientist Cybersecurity for the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and launched a successful cybersecurity startup company. She is also a Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

Frincke was educated at the University of California, Davis, earning a bachelor's degree in computer science and mathematics in 1985, a master's degree in computer science in 1989, and a Ph.D. in computer science in 1992. She became a professor of computer science at the University of Idaho before moving to the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and then moving again in 2011 to the National Security Agency.

Frincke is the first female head of the research directorate at the agency, and has spoken out about the importance of diverse perspectives in computer security.

In 2017 Frincke won the Founders Award of the Colloquium for Information Systems Security Education. She was elected as an ACM Fellow in 2019 "for contributions in education, the practice of research, and the leadership of cybersecurity". Also in 2019, the UC Davis College of Engineering named her as a distinguished alumna.