The challenges that arise from the integration of emerging technologies into existing social, commercial, legal and political systems will not be resolved by specialists working in isolation. Rather, these complex problems require the efforts of people who can cross disciplinary boundaries, communicate beyond their own fields, and comprehend the context in which others operate.
Computer science and engineering, information security, encryption, criminology, psychology, international relations, public policy, philosophy of science, legal studies, and economics combine to form the ecosystem within which cybersecurity problems and solutions are found but training people to think and work across these boundaries has proven difficult.
Working closely with industry and government partners and across disciplines is the only way to tackle comprehensively the complex problems we continue to face in cybersecurity.
Professor David Pym, CDT Director
News
From Academia to Industry: Reflections on an internship at Qualcomm Cambridge
Jay Dwyer-Joyce (Postgraduate Teaching Assistant and PhD candidate at CDT in Cybersecurity) reflects on her internship experience so far at Qualcomm.
29 Jul 2025
CDT Cybersecurity 2025 Writing Retreat
Jennifer Dwyer-Joyce talks about the student cohort experience at the CDT Cybersecurity 2025 Writing Retreat.
08 May 2025
Sir Anthony Finkelstein gives talk on Strategic Advantage in Science & Technology
Sir Anthony Finkelstein, Head of UCL Computer Science (2002 - 2010), recently delivered a compelling talk titled
17 Jan 2025
What's on
See moreCDT Talks
The CDT regularly hosts in-person, hybrid and online talks, seminars and discussions. Watch recordings of past talks on our YouTube channel.
Watch talksThis exciting collaboration brings together research teams in three of UCL’s departments – Computer Science, Security and Crime Science, and Science, Technology, Engineering and Public Policy (STEaPP) – in order to increase the capacity of the UK to respond to future information and cybersecurity challenges. We also draw upon many other departments across UCL.
Through an interdisciplinary approach, the CDT will train cohorts of highly skilled experts drawn from across the spectrum of science, engineering, social science, and more, able to become the next generation of UK leaders in industry and government, public policy, and scientific research. The CDT will equip them with a broad understanding of all sub-fields of cybersecurity, as well as specialized knowledge and transferable skills to enable them to operate professionally in business, academic, and policy circles.
Students and alumni
Find out about current and past PhD students at the CDT in Cybersecurity
Previous PhD projects
Discover the CDT’s diverse PhD projects tackling real-world cyber threats with a blend of technical innovation, human-centred insight, and policy expertise.
Industry partners
It is through the generosity and support of our partners that we are able to train the next generation of leaders in Cybersecurity.
CDT Cybersecurity Team
It is in a unique position to deliver on the vision of this innovative and interdisciplinary CDT in cybersecurity, because of its ambitious portfolio of projects and over 40 faculty members with internationally excellent expertise across all aspects of cybersecurity.
The team is led by the Computer Science department, which was the top UK department by research output in the UK REF 2014. UCL is recognized by GCHQ as an Academic Centre of Excellence in Cyber Security Research and Teaching.
The departments involved hold active research grants worth £17.9M in cybersecurity, funded by the EPSRC, Royal Society, EU H2020, and the ERC amongst others, including £300K of active direct financial gifts from industrial partners.
UCL leads the PETRAS project on IoT security (£9.5M) as well as its successor, SDTaP (£13M), the IRIS project on interfaces (£6.1M); the Glasshouses project on distributed ledgers (£0.9M); Cyber Readiness for Boards (£1M), ECSEPA (£250K) and BARAC on Algorithmic transparency (£0.6M). The department of Security and Crime Science hosts the £7.4M Dawes Centre for Future Crime at UCL which focuses on understanding and addressing the changing nature of crime.
UCL‘s Departments of Security and Crime Science and Computer Science also contribute a secure data lab — the only such facility in a UK university — which is police-assured to hold sensitive data classified up to the level of secret.
Prof Madeline Carr is the Director of the Research Institute in Sociotechnical Cyber Security (RISCS) and the Director of the UCL Digital Technologies Policy Lab. Her work focuses on the international political dimensions of cybersecurity, particularly cyber norms, the policy complexities of the IoT, and decision making on cyber risk.
Prof Shane Johnson is the Director of the Dawes Centre for Future Crime at UCL. His research focuses on what works to reduce crime, how emerging technology creates new opportunities for crime and how we might prevent it.
Prof David Pym is Professor of Information, Logic, and Security at UCL and a Fellow of the Institute of Philosophy, in the University of London's School of Advanced Study, where he is Director (with Corine Besson) of the Centre for Logic, Language, and Information (CeLLi). He is also a founding Editor-in-Chief of OUP's Journal of Cybersecurity.
- Dr Earl Barr: security testing, secure software engineering methodologies, malware and binary analysis
- Prof Madeline Carr: global politic of cybersecurity, international relations, power and innovation policy, cyberwar and cyber norms, national cyber security strategies, cyber risk assessment in boards, cyber security policy, Internet of Things.
- Prof Enrico Costanza: data and interaction with AI and autonomous systems
- Prof Emiliano De Cristofaro: trustworthy machine learning and socio-technical issues on the Web
- Prof Steven Hailes: robotics, infrastructure, Internet of Things, and manufacturing security
- Prof Mark Handley: operating systems, networking and distributed systems security
- Prof Philipp Jovanovic: applied cryptography, cryptocurrencies, distributed systems, privacy
- Dr Dimitrios Kanoulas: robot perception, robot learning, legged robots, mobile manipulators.
- Prof Tiago Mata: history and sociology of economic knowledge
- Dr Steven Murdoch: privacy, authentication and banking security
- Dr Mirco Musolesi: machine learning/artificial intelligence for cybersecurity
- Prof David Pym: logic, systems modelling, security policy & security economics
- Dr Leonie Tanczer: Cybersecurity, emerging technologies, Internet of Things, gender and tech, tech abuse, mental health, hacking, hacktivism, censorship, surveillance.
- Dr Marie Vasek: cryptocurrencies, cybercrime, security economics
- Dr Mark Warner: online safety, online hate speech, content moderation, misinformation, data deletion, algorithmic harms, usable privacy
- Dr Shi Zhou: online social media, epidemic spreading, detection of bots & frauds, complex networks, internet routing.
- Dr Sanaz Zolghadriha
- Dr Ingolf Becker: Usable cybersecurity, cybercrime, research methods in the cyber space, organisational security, dark marketplaces, banking security, developer-centred security, measurements, behaviour change
- Dr Kevin Chetty: Indoor Sensing and Contextual Awareness using commodity WiFi and IoT Devices
- Prof Paul Gill: Risk assessment and management of cybercriminality, risk assessment and management of violent extremism, online radicalisation
- Prof Shane Johnson: cyber crime, Internet of Things, policy evaluation, emerging technologies, useable security
- Dr Enrico Mariconti: systems for cybersecurity, in particular the use of AI against malware and cybercrime
- Dr Sandy Schumann
- Dr Nilufer Tuptuk: cyber-physical systems security, IoT security, transportation systems security, AI-based applied machine learning security, socio-technical security, applications of natural language processing to cybercrime
- Sir Prof Geoff Mulgan CBE
- Dr Ine Steenmans: future policy competencies and capabilities
- Dr Anna Maria Mandalari: Internet of Things (IoT), privacy, security, networking and Internet measurement techniques
- Prof Miguel Rio: programmable networks and congestion control
- Dr Néstor Castañeda: politics of inequality and redistribution in developing economies
- Dr Melanie Garson: cyber policy, tech geopolitics, and defence innovation challenges