Biography

Since February 2020 I have been the head of the DigiLab & Development unit, an innovation and development unit, for SaarLB (Landesbank Saar) in Saarbrücken. In addition, since February 2019 I have been working irregularly as a lecturer for cryptography and information security at the Baden-Württemberg Cooperative State University (DHBW). From time to time, I offer guest lectures at academic institutions, e.g. at the CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security.

Between March 2017 and February 2020 I worked as Information Security Officer for SaarLB (Landesbank Saar). From May 2016 to February 2017 I worked as a postdoctoral researcher in computer science at the Technische Universität Darmstadt in the SECUSO (Security, Usability, and Society) group (now at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology).

I completed my doctorate at the Technische Universität Darmstadt under the supervision of Melanie Volkamer in 2016. I furthermore completed my bachelor’s and master’s degrees in computer science in 2009 and 2011 respectively at Saarland University. I spent parts of my studies and my doctorate at the Università di Bologna under the supervision of Marco Prandini. I furthermore carried out research stays at the University of Bristol and at the Bern University of Applied Sciences. I graduated in 2015 from the the Software Campus, a graduate development program for future IT executives, with the admitted research project BoRoVo - a project which I conducted with the industry partner T-Systems International GmbH.

My research deals with questions of usable IT security and applied cryptography, with a special focus on the security of electronic voting systems, secure digital communication and security awareness. Recently, my interest has increasingly focused on the possibilities of modern cryptography and its application to protect privacy, e.g. fully homomorphic cryptography (FHE), secure multi party computation (MPC) and post quantum cryptography (PQC). My research resulted in more than 40 publications, including academic papers at renowned international conferences and in renowned international journals such as IFIP SEC, IEEE Security & Privacy, ARES, and the Financial Cryptography and Data Security (FC). In addition, as a security expert in the financial sector, I served as a co-author of the book “Bearbeitungs- und Prüfungsleitfaden: Neue MaRisk” (4th and 5th edition).

I serve(d) as editor, organizer, and reviewer of various international conferences and journals, including the Journal of Information Security and Applications, Cryptography – Open Access Journal, as well as the International Joint Conference on Electronic Voting (since 2020) and the International Conference on Availability, Reliability and Security (ARES) (since 2020) - refer to the Service section for a detailed list. In 2016, as an advisor to the Council of Europe, I contributed to the revision of Recommendation CM/Rec(2017)5 of the Committee of Ministers to member States on standards for e-voting. In 2021, I was invited as a subject matter expert for a study on the 2023 Social Security election (German: Sozialversicherungswahlen).

I was an invited guest speaker at the Bitkom Academy, the Friedrich Naumann Foundation and the University of Bristol. I was a co-initiator and invited expert of the Cybersecurity Day 2021 (see Flyer) and Cybersecurity Day 2022 (see Youtube video) respectively at the East Side Fab. Under the umbrella of the Cybersecurity Day, a security hackathon has been established (see Youtube video), to which I served as mentor and jury member.

I am a member of the German Informatics Society and the IACR - International Association for Cryptologic Research. My Erdős number is 3 (Stephan Neumann - Johannes Buchmann - Kálmán Győry - Paul Erdős). Furthermore, I am Certified in Cybersecurity by (ISC)².

If you are interested in working with me (e.g. for internships or theses), please do not hesitate to contact me (please refer to my short bio for further contact details).