Blanton earns national leadership fellowship for women in STEM

By Nicole Capozziello

ELATES is a national leadership development program at Drexel University. The one-year, part-time program focuses on increasing personal and professional leadership effectiveness, leading and managing change initiatives within institutions, using strategic finance and resource management to enhance organizational missions, and creating a network of exceptional women who bring organizational perspectives and deep personal capacity to the institutions and society they serve. 

Facilitated by leaders in the fields of STEM research and leadership development, the curriculum includes classroom lessons and activities, online instruction and discussion, and on-the-job application at each Fellow’s home institution. Blanton will be mentored by Kemper Lewis, Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science.

Blanton also received a scholarship from the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE), which covers the ELATES program tuition as well as related travel expenses during the upcoming fellowship year.

“Congratulations to Marina on receiving both the ELATES fellowship and ASEE scholarship,” says Jinhui Xu, professor and chair of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering. “This program will offer her an excellent opportunity to build on her leadership skills, which have already been such an asset to her colleagues and students in CSE.”  

Blanton is an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, faculty director of the Women in Science and Engineering (WiSE) program and faculty advisor to DivTech, a student organization that works with the Department of Computer Science and Engineering to increase diversity of people working in technology.

“I envision this experience to be valuable for managing large research undertakings, finding workable solutions to the issues my department is facing, and improving existing programs such as WiSE, for which I serve as faculty director,” says Marina Blanton. "Support that I received throughout the nomination process indicates SEAS and CSE commitment to promoting diversity and supporting women in leadership roles."

Blanton’s research interests are focused on information security, privacy and applied cryptography. Her research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, Air Force Research Laboratory, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and Google. 

She is a senior member of IEEE and ACM, and received the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences JEDI (Justice, Equity Diversity and Inclusion) faculty award in 2022.

Prior to joining UB in 2017, Blanton was an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Notre Dame and a research scientist at the Air Force Research Laboratory in Rome, N.Y. She received her PhD in computer science in 2007 from Purdue University.