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Find out about the current PhD students at the Centre for Doctoral Training in Cybersecurity.
Ales Cap
Ales is a PhD student at University College London (UCL), part of the Cybersecurity CDT. His research focuses on potential harms caused by Generative AI to democratic processes. Specifically, he's investigating the impacts synthetic content might have on the integrity of elections.
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Before his PhD, Ales worked as a management consultant, delivering large scale transformations with a focus on organisational and institutional design. Projects included working with the NHS on its transition to an Integrated Care System (ICS); merger of two large organisations in the UK energy sector; or designing and implementing a new operating model for a UK Ministerial Department. Ales holds a Master of Science degree in Psychology (Distinction) from UCL.
Gabriele Brancati Abate
I am a Doctoral Student in the CDT in Cybersecurity at UCL. As an area of research, Cybersecurity lies at the intersection of several other fields, including informatics, maths, psychology, engineering, and law, to name a few. While its multi-faceted nature makes it a fascinating and challenging discipline, the lack of a unifying glance renders Cybersecurity akin to an art, more than a science.
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My research project stands as a first step towards a systematization of the field and its methodologies, by means of a foundational investigation of key notions such as system, execution, etc, through the lenses of logic and formal methods in general. In particular, I have an interest in a novel semantical framework called ‘Base-extension Semantics’, as it provides a promising standpoint. For this reason, I also work in close contact with the Programming Principles, Logic and Verification Group in the CS department of UCL.
Nichola Copson
As a PhD researcher at University College London's Centre for Doctoral Training, my work focuses on detecting and preventing child sexual abuse within the metaverse. With a background as a successful entrepreneur, I transitioned into academia, driven by a passion for developing investigative solutions to protect vulnerable populations online.
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Alongside my PhD research, I am a postgraduate teaching assistant for Forensic Psychology and Research Methods modules while also completing UCL's Teaching Associate Programme to earn Advance HE Associate Fellowship (AFHEA) recognition.
Marta Emili Garcia Legure
I am a PhD student within the Cybersecurity CDT at UCL, supervised by Prof Mirco Musolesi and Prof Stephen Hailes. My research explores harmful behaviours in multi-agent systems where agents are powered by Large Language Models (LLMs). Currently, I focus on understanding the emergence of strategic deception in these environments and developing methods to quantify it.
Yingbo Fu
I am a PhD student at UCL’s CDT in Cybersecurity, under the supervision of Professor Earl Barr and Dr Ingolf Becker. My research is at the intersection of Software Engineering and Cybersecurity, and I am seeking approaches to working with optional typing to lower the required workload and get the most benefits on type security and code navigation. Before joining the CDT, I studied for my MSc in Software Engineering Systems at UCL.
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The prospect of addressing cybersecurity threats through a multidisciplinary approach, spanning from economics and psychology to crime science and philosophy, greatly appealed to me. This broad scope, combined with my deep interest in learning, led me to the decision to join the CDT.
In software programs, type information can help detect type-related errors and guard software security. However, adding type information to the program requires a significant workload. With optional typing, developers can decide where to add type annotations. Thus, in my research, I am attempting to research approaches and develop tools to lower the type-adding workload while enjoying the benefit of types.
Ganbat Ganbaatar
I am a PhD student in the Centre for Doctoral Training in Cybersecurity at UCL, under the supervision of Dr. Tristan Caulfield and Dr. Enrico Mariconti. My research focuses on the critical global issue of disinformation, which poses a significant threat to democracy and societal stability. Disinformation campaigns often leverage narratives that align with pre-existing beliefs shaped by cultural, historical, and political contexts, as well as national identities.
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My research aims to gain an in-depth understanding of these contexts, particularly in smaller, more vulnerable countries. I seek to explore how disinformation campaigns impact public perception, decision-making, and behavior in these nations, and how different cultural and historical factors are exploited in these processes.
I hold an MSc in Management of Information Technology from the University of Sussex and a BSc in Mathematical Modelling from the Mongolian University of Science and Technology. Before joining the Cybersecurity CDT, I worked in various roles across a range of organizations in Mongolia, including private companies, donor-funded good governance projects, and government organizations such as the National Security Council Secretariat, the Police Agency, and a think tank under the Prime Minister’s Office.
Shreevanth Gopalakrishnan
I am a PhD student in the Center for Doctoral Training in Cybersecurity at University College London, supervised by Prof. Stephen Hailes. My research focuses on threat vectors including malicious passive sensing and adversarial attacks on AI systems, particularly within the context of next-generation cellular and radar systems.
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Most recently, I worked as a Research Assistant at UCL on two PETRAS projects (ELLIOTT and PSWaRMS) related to the security of IoT/control systems in critical industries, such as the water utility sector.
I hold two master's degrees: an MEng (First-Class Honours) in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Bath and an MSc (Distinction) in Applied Artificial Intelligence from Cranfield University.
Libby Kent
I am a PhD candidate within the CDT for Cybersecurity, under the supervision of Dr Ingolf Becker and Dr Nilufer Tuptuk. After graduating with a Bachelor's in Experimental Psychology from University of Oxford, I applied here to study the humans within cyber defence, specifically in cyber security incident response teams.
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I now use my background in psychology to analyse the processes, tasks, and roles within these teams and whether they reflect our understanding of human behaviour- or if they need to be adjusted in order to allow teams to work to the best of their ability.
Andrew Losty
My PhD research is focused on the investigation of Internet of Things (IoT) protocols that influence online security with the objective of improving both the personal privacy of users and the protection of IoT devices.
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The work examines the scope and nature of personal user information that is collected, processed and disseminated by IOT devices within the legal and regulatory frameworks in which they operate.
The research also explores the development of additional security safeguards for resource-limited IoT devices. The Cyber Security CDT offers a valuable interdisciplinary approach that broadens and enhances the understanding of the research area. I am supervised by Dr Anna Maria Mandalari.
Lisa Malki
Lisa is a PhD student within the Cybersecurity CDT. She is based in the Information Security group and has a background in computer science. Her research focuses on evaluating the privacy and safety of generative AI technologies, particularly large language models (LLMs) from a user-centered perspective.
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Before her PhD, Lisa completed a Master’s degree in Human-Computer Interaction and worked as a research assistant in King’s College London on a project focused on improving the privacy of period tracking apps. Prior to that, she has worked as a data scientist and programmer in industry. She is passionate about the intersection between society, AI, and data science and combines user research and machine learning to develop tools which are effective and privacy-preserving.
Akhil Polamarasetty
I am a Ph.D. candidate at the CDT in Cybersecurity, supervised by Dr. Kevin Chetty and Dr. Leonie Tanczer. My current research interests are in studying the abuse of internet-connected devices for purposes such as stalking and harassment in intimate partner relations. I aim to develop solutions such as device fingerprinting that enable the design of safer internet-connected ecosystems.
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Academically, my background is in Computer Science and Engineering. After graduating from the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, I worked as a Software Engineer for a few years at Samsung Research India developing network management software for cellular networks. Since then I have obtained my Master's in Computer Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. During my master's I worked on using wireless sensing for applications like respiration rate monitoring and hidden device detection. I also volunteered as a consultant for the Madison Tech Clinic providing support to survivors of technology-facilitated domestic abuse
Adrian Szvoren
I'm working on cybersecurity within cyber-physical systems, namely robotics. AI and machine learning have brought a lot of opportunities for innovation and automation in robotics, but these techniques bring their own set of vulnerabilities. For example, you can trick a computer vision classification algorithm by slightly adjusting inputs, causing the system to misclassify objects in the environment and cause unintended actions.
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With the added physical aspect gaining control over a robot could result in harm not only to the robot itself but also to its immediate environment, potentially causing casualties to individuals nearby. Therefore, it is paramount to also pay attention to cyber-resilience of ML models along with their effectiveness.