In This Story
Armin Tadayon, an adjunct professor in the College of Engineering and Computing, often prepares for his lectures by delivering them first to Mops, his pug. “I tell my students I’m a lawyer and a professor, but I truly hate public speaking,” he laughs. As a result, he says he overprepares, and Mops becomes an expert in cyber law, data breach communications, and cybersecurity, which are a few of the topics that Tadayon teaches.
Tadayon was born in Iran but has been in Northern Virginia since he was a teenager, after spending a few years in London along the way. He earned his undergraduate degree from George Mason and then went to the Antonin Scalia Law School. “When I was in college, I was thinking I wanted to do something related to maybe politics or government and I knew that a law degree would give me a certain degree of versatility,” he said.
Not wanting to necessarily practice law, he put that versatility to use. “I speak Farsi, and I focused on national security and international relations and figured whatever I did was going to be in the cybersecurity world,” he said. He went to the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) to earn his master’s in cybersecurity. As he neared graduation a professor said to him, “‘You're the only lawyer we have in the program. How would you feel about teaching a cyber law course?’ My dad had been a professor, and my uncle was a teacher, and I just felt the calling.”
He enjoyed teaching at UMBC but wanted to be closer to his NoVa home. “I saw that George Mason had a cybersecurity engineering program but there was no law course,” he said. I emailed Peggy Brouse, professor and associate chair of undergraduate studies in the Department of Cyber Security Engineering, and I'm very grateful that she responded! That's how I ended up at George Mason.”
Did it take him long to get over his public-speaking nerves? Day one was a challenge: “The night of my first class I was leaving a job interview in the intelligence community, so I had just gone through a stressful few hours. On the way to campus I got stuck in traffic, with class starting in about 15 minutes, and I was having a mini-heart attack,” he said. “I walked in exactly on time and because of that anxiety I didn't have time to stress over the actual class. The moment I started talking to the students, it just felt very natural.”
Tadayon works for Brunswick Group, an advisory firm specializing in business-critical issues, where he has been for three years. When not working, Tadayon and his wife, a physician, enjoy being outdoors with Mops, of course, and spending time with his extended family, who live nearby.