Buchanan, Ridinger bring cybersecurity expertise to visiting professorships
Pictured from left: Ben Buchanan and Mark Ridinger
Salve Regina’s graduate programs in administration of justice and health care administration have hired two cybersecurity experts with cross-specialization in the fields of government affairs and health care to serve as visiting professors during the 2017-2018 academic year. The positions were made possible as part of a $180,000 research grant from global training company CAE.
Ben Buchanan, a postdoctoral fellow for the Cyber Security Project at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, and Mark Ridinger, a medical doctor and entrepreneur who most recently co-founded a digital health cloud-based care coordination platform, will both teach courses this fall. Buchanan will teach ADJ543: Cyber Intelligence and Ridinger will teach a new course, HCA552: Digital Health, Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Health Care Administration.
Buchanan’s research focuses on the intersection of cybersecurity and statecraft. His first book, “The Cybersecurity Dilemma: Hacking, Trust and Fear Between Nations,” was published by Oxford University Press in 2017. An expert contributor to numerous scholarly books and articles, Buchanan also currently serves as a global fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars.
He earned his Ph.D. in war studies from King’s College London, where he was a Marshall Scholar. He has master’s and bachelor’s degrees from Georgetown University.
Ridinger’s eclectic career includes credentials as a double board certified physician, clinician, medical researcher, inventor and entrepreneur. After finishing residency training at Duke University, Ridinger and his colleagues launched a pioneering predictive analytics company that helped to herald in the era of medical big data and machine learning. Later, he held senior executive positions in population health management companies as well as recently co-founding several new startups, including a digital health cloud-based care coordination platform aimed at bringing the promise of value based medicine into the growing challenge of elder care and transitional health care.
Ridinger has lectured and written extensively on topics as diverse as the nature and enhancement of creativity, the intersection and impact of health care policy on the adoption of technology, and the future of work and education in an increasingly automated and algorithmically driven world.
He has a bachelor’s degree with honors from Georgetown University, and a medical degree from the University of Illinois, also with honors, maintaining a license to practice medicine in Virginia. He was elected to Alpha Omega Alpha, the national medical honorary society, and holds several U.S. and foreign patents.
