RANDALL S. MURCH
Randall S. Murch PhD is the Cyber-Bio Research Lead for the Office of the Vice President for Strategic Initiatives and Adjunct Professor, School of Plant and Environmental Sciences and Affiliate Faculty, Center for Advanced Innovation in Agriculture, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Virginia Tech USA. He has been with Virginia Tech for 17.5 years. Prior to coming to Virginia Tech, he was with a high-level U.S. Government study and analysis center for two years and prior to that with the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation for nearly 23 years from which he retired in 2002. His experience spans field operations and investigations, methodology and technology development and validation in both forensic science as well as engineering support to field operations. He has worked across the spectrum of technical operations, from tactical to strategic. Beginning in 2016, he has been a visible proponent, developer and strategist for cyberbiosecurity which now has worldwide interest. He has published and presented extensively in this topic, as well as many others going back to 1976. He has been actively involved in U.S. and international engagements since the early 1980s. He has testified in courts of law across the USA ca. 110 times, and to high-level boards and Congress 10 times. He has served on boards and committees at the U.S. National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine for a total of 18 years and on U.S. Government advisory committees for ca. 20 years. Dr. Murch holds a Bachelor of Science in Biology from the University of Puget Sound, Tacoma, Washington USA (1974), a Master of Science in Botanical Sciences from the University of Hawai’i, Honolulu, Hawaii USA (1976) and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Plant Pathology from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, USA (1979).