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Gary Cantrell

Associate Teaching Professor, Computer Science

Gary Cantrell is an associate teaching professor at the Roux Institute where he is currently teaching in Northeastern’s Align program, and has been focusing on course development and building student community at the Roux Institute.

Cantrell’s first academic position was at Utah Tech University in St. George, UT. During this time he was instrumental in establishing their Computer Crime Institute (originally a grant-funded organization providing academic programs, law enforcement training, and digital forensic examinations). There he served as academic coordinator and primary faculty for their academic and police training mission. After reaching tenure at this university, Cantrell decided to expand out from digital forensics and searched for an opportunity teaching in core computer science. This prompted a move to Southern Utah University and from there to his current appointment at the Roux Institute.

In his spare time Cantrell enjoys collecting hobbies. Some of his strongest obsessions include fiber arts, halloween prop building, and soap making. He believes it is important to find a balance between the proverbial right and left brain. In fact, he is also a licensed massage therapist. He currently lives in Portland, ME with his husband and two weirdo cats.

Research Overview

Cantrell is currently focused on teaching graduate courses within the Align program, such as Computational Thinking and Object Oriented Design as well as Information Security, Digital Forensics, and Software Engineering. He is also currently working toward the establishment of project-based courses in support of the mission at the Roux Institute.

Areas of Expertise

  • Core Computer Science
  • Digital Forensics
  • Software Engineering

Publications

  • Cantrell, Gary D. and Aljafer, Hussain, “4 Year Comparison Of Undergraduate Students Provided Personal Laptop Computers: Initial Research”, The 2020 International Conference on Computational Science and Computational Intelligence, Las Vegas
  • Cantrell, Gary D. and Runs Through, Joan (2020) “Teaching Data Carving Using The Real World Problem of Text Message Extraction From Unstructured Mobile Device Data Dumps,” Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law: Vol. 14 : No. 4 , Article 4
  • Cantrell, Gary D. and Runs Through, Joan, “The Five Levels of Data Destruction: A Paradigm for Introducing Data Recovery in a Computer Science Course,” 2019 International Conference on Computational Science and Computational Intelligence (CSCI), Las Vegas, NV, USA, 2019, pp. 133-138
  • Cantrell, Gary and Dampier, David, “Evaluation of the Semi-automated Crime-Specific Digital Triage Process Model,” IFIP Int. Conf. Digital Forensics 2013: 83-98
  • Cantrell, Gary and Baylot, Alex, “Computing a Time Based Effective Radius-of- curvature for Roadways,” World Academy of Science, 2011 – Book Article