PNNL

Dr. Michael Henson joined the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory’s National Security Directorate in April 2023 as a senior cybersecurity researcher working as a principal investigator and program manager, as well as an individual contributor on various projects, including adversarial artificial intelligence, nuclear nonproliferation, and mobile security. In 2024, he was named group leader for the Cyber Resilience Foundations group in the Emerging Threats and Technologies Division. In that role he is a thought leader helping to drive the group and PNNL’s vision and strategy for research and development in cyber resilience while supporting and growing his team of researchers.

Prior to joining Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, he served for 22 years on active duty in the U.S. Air Force. As a cyber warfare officer, he contributed to national-level cybersecurity strategy as a recognized subject matter expert, taught cybersecurity at the Air Force Academy, directed multi-million-dollar research efforts at Air Force Research Laboratory and commanded at the flight and squadron levels. These assignments culminated in his position as the director of operations for the 744th Communications Squadron at Andrews Air Force Base, where he was responsible for leading over 300 military, civilian, and contractor personnel providing critical command and control capabilities to Joint Base Andrews, Joint Base Bolling, The Pentagon, and 208 bases worldwide in four combatant commands. This included maintaining the operational availability of over 20,000 systems and implementing a comprehensive risk-reduction plan, including vulnerability detection, analysis, patching, and reporting. Dr. Henson participated in several cyber defense exercises throughout his military career as the blue team leader and took first place as a stand-alone red team attacker in an FBI-sponsored InfraGard competition.

After retiring from the U.S. Air Force, he worked for the Intelligence Community for five years as a senior principal developer and team leader before helping to grow a tech startup (Grayshift) as a principal software engineer and later engineering manager and team leader. The startup provides a tool for capturing forensic extractions from iPhone and Android devices for law enforcement agencies around the world. Dr. Henson has over two decades of cybersecurity experience ranging from hands-on reverse engineering and implant development to enterprise security, project management, and published research.

• Cybersecurity
• Machine learning
• Mobile forensics
• Reverse engineering
• Software engineering
• Trust in computing systems
• Memory safety/protection

• PhD in computer engineering (dissertation focus on memory safety), Dartmouth College
• MS in computer science (thesis focus on machine learning), Air Force Institute of Technology
• BS in computer science, Angelo State University