Richard DeMillo holds the Charlotte B. and Roger C. Warren Chair in Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology. With cybersecurity threats on the rise, he founded and led Georgia Tech’s School of Cybersecurity and Privacy, the first-of-a-kind at a top research university, to close the national skills gap in cybersecurity. He was formerly the John P. Imlay Dean of Georgia Tech's College of Computing and Director of the Georgia Tech Information Security Center.

He has held senior leadership positions in industry, government, and academia. He was Hewlett-Packard/s first Chief Technology Officer.  While Vice President of Computing Research for Bell Communications Research, he led the development of now-ubiquitous e-commerce technologies enabled by the Internet. He launched transformational programs while director of the Computer Research Division for the National Science Foundation and director of the Software Test and Evaluation Project for the Secretary of Defense's Office. In each of those positions, he launched programs and initiatives with enduring national and business impact.

His academic research includes over 100 articles, books, and patents in computer science and cybersecurity. He works at the intersection of fundamental problems in digital technology and the public impact of those technologies. His 1979 paper "Social Processes and Proofs of Theorems and Programs" has been reprinted dozens of times and was recently cited as one of the 50 most influential papers in computer science.

He currently works in the area of election and voting system security. His work has been cited in dozens of court cases, including the 2019 Federal Court decision declaring paperless voting machines unconstitutional. He has served as a foreign election observer for the Carter Center and is a member of the State of Michigan Election Security Commission.

As an educator, he founded and led the Center for 21st Century Universities (C21U), a living laboratory for fundamental change in higher education. He was named Lumina Foundation Fellow, citing his creation of C21U as a "unique institution.". His book, Revolution in Higher Education (MIT Press, 2015), won the 2016 PROSE Award from the American Association of Publishers. The Commission on Creating the Next in Education, which he co-chaired, won the 2019 Achievement Award of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Association for Computing Machinery.