Lori D. Coombs works full-time supporting the DoD and part-time as an Associate Professor at the University of Arizona Global Campus, supporting info systems, environmental science and advanced air mobility disciplines that address the cross-cutting integration of entrepreneurship, cybersecurity, and infrastructures across the airspace ecosystem. Lori’s lab seeks to understand interactions between solar energetic particles (SEPs), the heliosphere, atmosphere, ionosphere, and magnetosphere that underlay space weather, the impacts of climate change, and planetary alignment associated with space travel. The research employs physics-based modeling, optical remote sensing, and satellite observations that apply data science and artificial intelligence to distributed observations of the geospatial environment that consider cybersecurity by protecting space, aviation, and communications infrastructure.
Lori’s previous appointments included managing NASA’s cybersecurity efforts as the Sr. Principal Technical Manager, for Earthdata Infrastructure and Earthdata Login missions. Lori has experience moving data infrastructures into the Cloud through onboarding initiatives with the Next Generation Application Platform (NGAP) Operations team. Lori was awarded NASA’s Robert H. Goddard Award in Mentoring.
In addition to supporting NASA, she gained experience supporting the US Senate, Congress, Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), (DNI) - Open-Source Center, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), and the Architect of the Capitol (AOC) where human-computer interaction (HCI) and roles led to supporting the R&D of astronomy, planetary science, human systems integration (HSI) and geospatial cybersecurity. Lori ensures that all R&D work results in protected technologies for DOD and industry stakeholders.
Lori is the Vice Chair of Professional Activities Committee and a Director for IEEE’s Northern Virginia Section Executive Committee. She serves on the Advisory Board for the Strategic AI and Women in Leadership Programs at the Univ of Colorado Colorado Springs (UCCS). Lori is CEO of WWCM and Director of WWCM Academy, a not-for-profit that advocates for students to pursue careers in STEAM. Lori founded CyberJobs.World a division of WWCM, a cybersecurity careers coaching platform aimed at bridging millions of job vacancies and upskilling the talent gap.
For over twenty years, Lori has worked on Capitol Hill. She continues to engage with the NASA centers and facilities, Space Force, DOD, Space Generation Advisory Council (SGAC), United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), National Institute of Standards and Tech (NIST) and be a state-of-the-art leader on and in mission-critical Command, Control, Comms, Computers, Cyber-Defense, Combative Systems, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C6ISR) programs.
Lori is pursuing a Doctor of Science (D.Sc.) in Cybersecurity at Marymount University and has been accepted into the Oxford Sustainable Business Programme at the University of Oxford. She earned an MS in Systems Engineering from George Washington University, an MBA, and a BS in Business Administration from Bowie State University. Lori presented at USCYBERCOM’s Cyber Research & Ed Conference (Cyber RECon) 2025 in support of evaluating current assessment methods and metrics within the US Cyber Command (USCYBERCOM). Lori has publications, including “Risks of AI Apps Used in Higher Ed” in the EJEL and numerous National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education (NICE) topics with the NIST.
