Ms. Terry Benzel is the Managing Director of the Information Sciences Institute (ISI) at the University of Southern California. I manage all aspects of operations. I am responsible for finance, contracting, purchasing, IT, administrative staff, and communications/marketing. As a member of the ISI Leadership team, I contribute to defining and operationalizing the strategic direction for the Institute. Previously, as Director of Networking and Cybersecurity Research at ISI, she managed a team of 70 researchers, faculty, students, and staff, responsible for research directions, development of research proposals to government funding agencies, and management of execution and finances. She established and led the DETER Cybersecurity Testbed and Experimentation program. She is an IEEE Fellow recognized for leadership in establishing the field of cybersecurity experimentation. She is a recognized leader in advanced technology, spanning government research labs, startups, industry, and academia. In multiple director roles, she led teams of 50-150 people and managed budgets up to $ 80M. As a strategic thinker, she contributes to business and organizational strategy and serves on advisory boards for leading organizations, helping shape their research and business agendas. Prior to joining ISI, Benzel served as a division vice president at Network Associates, Inc. (McAfee). She led the advanced research organization, comprising 125 individuals, primarily focused on R&D projects for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and other federal entities. Benzel has twice testified before the US House of Representatives Committee on Science about the importance of investing in cybersecurity research and its infrastructure. She serves as an advisor to government and industry on R&D strategy and roadmap development.

My primary research area is experimental cybersecurity, with a focus on creating the infrastructure, methods, and tools needed to conduct rigorous cybersecurity experimentation and evaluation at scale. I have led research teams in the design, development, deployment, and operation of advanced, openly accessible cybersecurity research infrastructure.

Beginning in 2004, I served as Principal Investigator for the DETER Cybersecurity Testbed. DeterLab became a widely used public research resource, supporting more than 1,000 researchers in 46 countries and enabling experimental cybersecurity research that would otherwise have been difficult or impossible to conduct safely and at scale. DETER also became an important platform for cybersecurity education, reaching more than 20,000 students.

As my responsibilities expanded into Institute leadership, I continued to support and advise the research team developing SPHERE (Security and Privacy Heterogeneous Environment for Reproducible Experimentation). Building on concepts and systems pioneered through DETER, SPHERE is creating a new generation of research infrastructure supporting reproducible experimentation across cybersecurity and privacy. It is now in advanced development and beta use.

I continue to conduct research in cybersecurity experimentation and test and evaluation, with increasing emphasis on the broader role of experimental infrastructure and its applications across research, government, and society. I am also an organizer of the 2026 Dagstuhl Seminar on Cyber Security Experimentation Beyond Exercises and Cyber Ranges, which is exploring the future of cybersecurity experimentation and the research infrastructure needed to support it.

IEEE Computer Society Fellow
IEEE Computer Society Golden Core Member, 2022
IEEE Security and Privacy Magazine: AEIC Outstanding Service Award
US Department of Homeland Security Cyber is a Team Sport Award
USC Information Sciences Institute Achievement Award
IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Security and Privacy Computer Society Recognition for Outstanding Community Service
IEEE Computer Society Award for Continuing Service