Gregory Falco
American inventor and researcher
Gregory Falco is an American inventor and researcher. Falco is a professor at Cornell University. He is a pioneer in the field of cybersecurity research and its aerospace applications. Falco is the founding chair of IEEE's Standard for Space System Cybersecurity and the NATO Country Project Director for the NATO Science for Peace and Security effort to reroute the internet to space.
Early Life and Education
Gregory Falco earned his B.S. from Cornell University in 2010 and his M.S. from Columbia University in 2012. He went on to complete his Ph.D. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2018, with doctoral research funded by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to develop an AI system capable of automatically enumerating threats to space mission systems. During his doctoral studies, he completed a predoctoral fellowship with the Cyber Security Project at Harvard University. Following his doctorate, Falco conducted postdoctoral research at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and at the Cyber Policy Center at Stanford University.
Career
Falco began his professional career at Accenture, where he served as an executive in the Strategy & Sustainability practice. During this period, he also lectured at Columbia University, teaching a course on Smart Cities and the Evolution of Sustainability.
In 2016, while at MIT, Falco co-founded NeuroMesh Inc., a company focused on industrial control security. His contributions in this area earned him a listing in the Forbes 30 Under 30 in Enterprise Technology. NeuroMesh was later acquired by Meta Platforms in 2022.
In 2021, Falco joined the faculty of Johns Hopkins University as an assistant professor at the Institute for Assured Autonomy, where he directed the Aerospace ADVERSARY Laboratory. In 2023, he moved to Cornell University, joining the Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and Systems Engineering as an assistant professor.
Research and Notable Work
Falco's primary research focus is aerospace and space systems cybersecurity. In 2018, he published the paper Cybersecurity Principles for Space Systems in the Journal of Aerospace Information Systems, which offered recommendations to reduce cyber risk in the commercial space sector and helped inform the United States Space Policy Directive-5. Related work titled Job One For Space Force: Space Asset Cybersecurity was published by Harvard's Belfer Center.
In 2022, Falco co-authored a monograph with Eric Rosenbach titled Confronting Cyber Risk: An Embedded Endurance Strategy for Cybersecurity, addressing cyber risk management. That same year, he received a DARPA Young Faculty Award for his project on the Orbital Resilient Blockchain Interagent Transaction Service (ORBITS) Architecture, a zero-trust framework for hosted payloads and space infrastructure. He also serves as a member of the Space Systems Critical Infrastructure Working Group hosted by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
In 2023, Falco was named founding chair of the Standard for Space Systems Cybersecurity by the IEEE Standards Association. He also published WannaFly: An Approach to Satellite Ransomware at the IEEE 9th International Conference on Space Mission Challenges for Information Technology, representing the first public documentation of a methodology for ransomwaring a space vehicle. Falco appeared as an aerospace security expert with BBC News, Bloomberg News, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Channel 4, and Vice Media in connection with the 2023 Chinese balloon incident.
In 2024, NATO Science for Peace and Security appointed Falco as NATO Country Director to lead the development of HEIST — Hybrid space and submarine architecture to Ensure Information Security to Telecommunications. The initiative, involving the United States, Sweden, Iceland, and Switzerland across academia, industry, and government, aims to reroute internet traffic through space in the event that undersea cables are attacked or severed. The project, reported to cost $2.5 million, drew interest from the Swedish Navy and the Icelandic government. Falco also provided expert commentary on the 2024 CrowdStrike incident to outlets including the Associated Press, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Bloomberg News, ABC News, and The Daily Telegraph.
Recognition
Falco has been recognized with a Forbes 30 Under 30 listing in Enterprise Technology and a DARPA Young Faculty Award. He has served in leadership roles at IEEE and NATO, and his research has directly shaped U.S. federal space cybersecurity policy.
