Daniel Tauritz' Academic Profile

Dr. Daniel Tauritz is:

the COLSA Corporation Cyber Security and Information Assurance Endowed Professor with Tenure in the Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering in the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering at Auburn University (AU)
AU's Director for National Laboratory Relationships (DNLR)
Founding director of AU's Biomimetic National Security Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (BONSAI Lab)
Founding head of AU's Biomimetic Artificial Intelligence Research Group (BioAI Group)
Guest Scientist & University Collaboration Scientist with Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL)
Cyber consultant for Sandia National Laboratories where he was on sabbatical during the 2014-2015 academic year

Formerly he was the Interim Director and Chief Cyber AI Strategist for the Auburn Cyber Research Center (ACRC), the founding academic director of the LANL/AU Cyber Security Sciences Institute (CSSI), and the faculty advisor of Auburn University's Ethical Hacking Club. Before that, he was an Associate Professor with Tenure and Associate Chair of Undergraduate Studies and Outreach Activities in the Department of Computer Science at Missouri University of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T), formerly University of Missouri-Rolla (UMR). He was the director of S&T's Natural Computation Laboratory (NC-LAB), a Research Investigator in the Intelligent Systems Center, and an Investigator in the Energy Research & Development Center.

Full Curriculum Vitae (PDF) Last revised December 2, 2025
AU College of Engineering Profile
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Promotion

Effective August 16, 2025, Dr. Tauritz was promoted to Professor. As part of the promotion reception, faculty select a book that has profoundly influenced their personal and professional journeys, and write a personal statement to provide insight into each selected work's influence. Dr. Tauritz' selection was Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid. His accompanying personal statement was:

Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid, affectionately referred to as GEB by devotees like myself, was awarded the 1980 Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction and won the National Book Awards 1980 for Science. It was written by Douglas R. Hofstadter, a renowned scientist who, like GEB, is impossible to pigeon-hole into any single scientific discipline. This unicorn of a book transcends disciplinary boundaries to elegantly show that the scientific inquiry is not only among the most creative of humankind’s endeavors, but can also be among its most artful. The author summarizes the book through its subtitle, A Metaphorical Fugue on Minds and Machines in the Spirit of Lewis Carroll. Asking someone what this book is about, is somewhat of a Rorschach test, as it takes the reader on a whirlwind journey through mathematics, computer science, philosophy, and art, investigating universal themes of self-reference, isomorphism, epistemology, and the emergence of cognition. It lucidly draws parallels between the music of composer Johann Sebastian Bach, the drawings of artist M.C. Escher, and the incompleteness theorems of logician Kurt Gödel. GEB has inspired assignments in my introductory programming and discrete mathematics courses. Above all, it reminds me that the field of computer science is magical and beautiful. Sharing that is the greatest gift I can bestow upon my students.

Research

Dr. Tauritz' research centers around Artificial Intelligence approaches to complex real-world problem solving with an emphasis on National Security problems in areas such as Cyber Security & Critical Infrastructure Protection. His background is in Evolutionary Computing and his current focus areas are:

Computational Game Theory employing Coevolutionary Algorithms for identifying high-consequence adversarial strategies and corresponding defense strategies.
Hyper-heuristics employing Evolutionary Computation for the Automated Design of Algorithms tailored for high-performance on targeted problem classes.
Evolutionary Algorithms for Simulating Molecular Evolution (EASME)

Recent events he was involved in include:

Co-Chair, 15th Workshop on Evolutionary Computation for the Automated Design of Algorithms (ECADA) @GECCO 2025

Teaching

Dr. Tauritz teaches a two-course sequence on evolutionary computing. The first course is COMP 5660/6660 - Evolutionary Computing. The second course is COMP 7660 - Research Methods in Evolutionary Computing. The most recent offering in this course sequence is COMP 5660/6660 in Fall 2025, which is to be followed by COMP 7660 in Spring 2026.

He taught a section of COMP 3240 - Discrete Structures in Spring 2023, and two sections of COMP 2240 - Discrete Structures in Spring 2025 (COMP 3240 was renumbered as COMP 2240).

He co-taught with Dr. Drew Springall a two-course sequence on Artificial Intelligence for Security (AI4Sec). The first course is COMP 5970/6970 - AI4Sec-Foundations. The second course is COMP 7800 - AI4Sec-Research & Development. The last offering in this course sequence was COMP 5970/6970 in Spring 2024.

For Dr. Tauritz' collected wisdom on coding (mostly collected from his TAs!), click here.

Miscellaneous

Dr. Tauritz curates the following two news briefs:

Office Location & Hours

Contact Information