Shaun T. Schafer is the associate vice president of curriculum, academic effectiveness and policy development in the Department of Academic Affairs at the Metropolitan State University of Denver. Schafer is also professor in the Journalism and Media Production Department. His areas of expertise include media law, media ethics, free press, curriculum policies and artificial intelligence in academic settings.
Richard Mac Namee is the director of the Cybersecurity Center at Metropolitan State University of Denver. His areas of expertise include counterterrorism, counterinsurgency, intelligence operations, covert operations, nuclear security and cybersecurity. He currently teaches Cybersecurity Capstone for senior students.
Prior to joining MSU Denver, Mac Namee worked as a British Army officer, whose service included the Household Division’s Scots Guards and being an operator and commander in the United Kingdom’s Special Forces. His service required him to deploy to numerous locations throughout the world commanding operations conducted in the interests of national security, including being seconded to the U.K.’s Security Service (MI5).
Following a recall to military service as a Special Operations commander from 2009 to 2011 as part of the U.S. surge into Afghanistan, Mac Namee was recruited by a Tier One research university in the U.S. and appointed as a professor of the Practice at the Bush School of Government and Public Service. There, he delivered graduate-level classes in Counter-Terrorism, Intelligence Operations and Covert Operations, as well as Technical and Cybersecurity Operations. Mac Namee returned to private practice in September 2018 to deliver Counter-U.A.S. technologies into Thailand as well as Artificial Intelligence Cybersolutions for a large Mexican bank.
Since retiring from the military, Mac Namee has successfully established and led several profitable commercial enterprises in the private sector in the fields of business intelligence, security and risk. He was awarded the Queen’s Commendation for Valuable Service for his services with Special Operations. He is the author of “The 5W’s of Terrorism,” which was published in the 5th International Symposium and Seminar on Global Nuclear Human Resource Development for Safety, Security and Safeguards in 2016.
Steve Beaty, Ph.D., has an extensive background in both the theoretic and pragmatic aspects of computers and networks. He wrote compilers at Cray Computer, managed a large group of developers and was a software test architect at Hewlett-Packard. He was also the security team lead at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder.
At Metropolitan State University of Denver, Beaty is currently a professor of Computer Science and has served as chair of the Mathematical and Computer Sciences Department and interim vice-president for Information Technology. He works on a number of open-source projects, consults with a variety of businesses and interviews regularly with the media.
