Dr. Ashley Podhradsky is the Vice President for Research & Economic Development at Dakota State University. She is also a member of the South Dakota Biotech and First Bank & Trust Board of Directors. Dr. Podhradsky is the founding director of both the DigForCE Lab: Digital Forensics for Cyber Enforcement and CybHER™ Institute in the MadLabs™. She has been an invited speaker for agencies and events including InfraGard, and Women in Cyber Security (WiCyS), and the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media. Her research teams have received millions in competitive grants from the NSA and NSF for research and outreach programs. Current awards include NSF NRT in Understanding and Thwarting the Illicit Underground Economy, NSF REU in IoT Security, NSA GenCyber, South Dakota Governor’s Research Center on Understanding and Disrupting the Illicit Underground Economy. In addition to her academic and professional work, she has a strong passion for increasing gender diversity in cybersecurity.

She is the co-founder of CybHER, a cybersecurity outreach program which has reached thousands of people from K-12 to college age and beyond. Some of this is accomplished through the annual GenCyber: Girls in CybHER Security, a free program sponsored by the NSA. Dr, Podhradsky was the recipient of the EmBe 2017 “Young Woman of Achievement,” The 2017 Merrill Hunter Award for Excellence in Research, is a 2017 and 2018 New America Cybersecurity Fellow. She was also named an American Association for the Advancement of Science IF/THEN Ambassador in 2019. Through this program, she is one of 120 women in STEM featured around the country with a life-size statue.