Dr. Bryson Payne is an award-winning cyber coach, author, TEDx speaker, college professor, and the founding Director of the Institute for Cyber Operations at the University of North Georgia. He is a tenured professor of computer science at UNG, where he has taught aspiring coders and cyber professionals since 1998, including coaching UNG’s #1-in-the-nation 2019 & 2020 NSA Codebreaker Challenge cyber operations teams.

Dr. Payne is also an award-winning online instructor with 77,000 students in his Udemy courses, from more than 180 countries. Dr. Payne has multiple best-selling courses on Udemy beginning with Teach Your Kids to Code (Python), and both Real-World Ethical Hacking and Learn Java the Easy Way have been rated in the top 10% of all Udemy courses!

Dr. Payne was recognized by the UNG Alumni Association as the 2021 Distinguished Professor, and by the cybersecurity industry association, EC-Council, as the 2021 Academic Instructor of the Year. He has been awarded the Department of the Army Commander’s Award for Public Service medal from U.S. Army Cadet Command, the University System of Georgia Chancellor’s Service Excellence Leader of the Year Award, and the Order of Thor medal from the Military Cyber Professionals Association. He is a member of the coaching staff for the first-ever US Cyber Team for 2021-2022, competing in the world ICSC competition in Athens, Greece.

Dr. Payne is a Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH), Certified EC-Council Instructor (CEI), Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP), and he holds the elite SANS|GIAC GPEN, GRID, and GREM cybersecurity certifications. He has written over $51.2 Million in successful grants for workforce development, technology education, and cybersecurity, and he has trained over 77,000 students through his online courses on coding and ethical hacking. He was also the first Department Head of Computer Science at UNG and enjoys working with K-12 schools worldwide to promote computer science and cybersecurity education.

Dr. Payne holds a Ph.D. in computer science from Georgia State University. Featured in the Wall Street Journal, Campus Technology, and CIO magazine, Dr. Payne is the author of Amazon #1 New Release Teach Your Kids to Code: A Parent-Friendly Guide to Python Programming (2015), as well as Learn Java the Easy Way (2017), Go Hack Yourself (2022), and Hacking for Kids (2022), all published by No Starch Press.

Dr. Payne has been coding, hacking, and reverse-engineering for over 37 years; he sold his first paid program to RUN Magazine (Commodore 64) for their “Magic" column in 1985, for $10. In addition to his love for technology, Dr. Payne speaks Spanish, French, Russian, and Mandarin Chinese.