Sami has been a visionary thought leader in cybersecurity for over three decades. He has worked for elite organizations, including DARPA, NSA, and NASA. Sami has published landmark papers in the field and provided consultation to national leadership on cybersecurity policy. In addition, he has enjoyed educating the public through interviews with major media such as CNN, PBS, ABC, the New York Times, the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Time magazine. 

Sami authored the landmark textbook Engineering Trustworthy Secure Systems: Get Cybersecurity Design Right the First Time.

Developed for self-study and classroom use, the book lays out a concise set of best practices and best theories that can be applied to real security design problems. The book provides never-before-published design principles and detailed examples, which span the entire spectrum of today’s cyberattacks. Lauded by many experts including leaders in the field such as John M. Poindexter, Ph.D., VADM, U.S. Navy (ret.), Former National Security Advisor to President Reagan who wrote:

“This is the ‘bible’ for cybersecurity, which needs to be consulted as we struggle to solve this enormous threat to our national security.”

In addition, Sami has published numerous articles on cybersecurity.

Since moving to Vermont Sai has become active as a professor at Dartmouth University where he teaches cybersecurity.

Rami was born in Barron, Wisconsin, in 1960. His father was a general surgeon and immigrated to the United States after completing medical school in Geneva, Switzerland. His mother was a certified nurse anesthetist. As a young boy, the family moved to Oklahoma for about eight years and then to upstate New York, where he finished high school.

He completed his undergraduate degree in biochemistry at Rice University in Houston, where he met and married his wife, Christy. After graduation from Rice, they moved to Galveston, Texas, where he attended medical school at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) to obtain his medical degree. While completing medical school, Rami developed a keen interest in biomedical research involving cancer suppression. He continued that interest in his general surgery residency at UTMB, which he completed in 1992.

He set up a successful private general surgery in Crawfordsville, Indiana, where he remained for over 20 years. During his surgical practice, he developed an interest in health care administration serving on numerous boards and committees at local, regional, and national levels.

He decided to pursue a master’s degree in business administration, which he completed at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville Physician Executive MBA program (PEMBA) in 2011. His capstone thesis was entitled Formation of an Accountable Care Organization in a Rural Environment. Rami was then appointed President of the Franciscan Physician Network for Western Indiana. He helped build and manage an extensive physician network dedicated to quality and transforming healthcare delivery to a patient-centered model.

After retiring in 2013, Dr. Saydjari moved back to Texas. He continues to be interested in research involving medicine, surgery, and history among other areas. He is currently working on a book titled Running the Medical Maze

Rami has been interviewed on podcasts, radio, and for magazine articles and interviews on local radio and in medical magazines.

Maria is a Physician-Writer who practices primary care and obesity medicine in New York City. She attended City College of New York for her undergraduate education, and after graduation, she completed medical school at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. She then completed an internship and residency at New York Presbyterian/Cornell Medical Center.

After completing her training, she committed to a career in medical education, serving in various roles such as Program Director of the Internal Medicine Residency Program at Stamford Hospital in Connecticut. In 2016, she joined the Mount Sinai Health System where she had a busy primary care practice, and was Faculty Advisor and Director of Education for Cross-Cultural and Patient-Centered Communication at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, where she remains an Adjunct Associate Professor of Medicine.

She is presently a medical director at Reside Health, a company devoted to delivering primary care in the way that patients and physicians desire. Dr. Maldonado is board-certified in Internal Medicine and a diplomate of the American Board of Obesity Medicine. She is a fellow of the American College of Physicians, an educator at the Institute for Medical Education at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and a member of the Alliance for Academic Internal Medicine and the Obesity Medical Association.

Dr. Maldonado lives in Yonkers, NY, a suburb of New York City. She is working on a memoir about her own experiences with her weight loss journey. Her research has focused on health equity, patient-physician communication, and the intersection between the arts and policy. Her medical narrative essays have been published in medical anthologies, the Journal of the American Medical Association, Annals of Internal Medicine, Health Affairs, and the Washington Post.