Skip to main content
Navigate back to homepage
Open search bar.
Open main navigation menu

Main navigation

  • Study
    UCL Portico statue
    Study at UCL

    Being a student at UCL is about so much more than just acquiring knowledge. Studying here gives you the opportunity to realise your potential as an individual, and the skills and tools to thrive.

    • Undergraduate courses
    • Graduate courses
    • Short courses
    • Study abroad
    • Centre for Languages & International Education
  • Research
    Tree-of-Life-MehmetDavrandi-UCL-EastmanDentalInstitute-042_2017-18-800x500-withborder (1)
    Research at UCL

    Find out more about what makes UCL research world-leading, how to access UCL expertise, and teams in the Office of the Vice-Provost (Research, Innovation and Global Engagement).

    • Engage with us
    • Explore our Research
    • Initiatives and networks
    • Research news
  • Engage
    UCL Print room
    Engage with UCL

    Discover the many ways you can connect with UCL, and how we work with industry, government and not-for-profit organisations to tackle tough challenges.

    • Alumni
    • Business partnerships and collaboration
    • Global engagement
    • News and Media relations
    • Public Policy
    • Schools and priority groups
    • Visit us
  • About
    UCL welcome quad
    About UCL

    Founded in 1826 in the heart of London, UCL is London's leading multidisciplinary university, with more than 16,000 staff and 50,000 students from 150 different countries.

    • Who we are
    • Faculties
    • Governance
    • President and Provost
    • Strategy
  • Active parent page: UCL Engineering
    • Study
    • Research
    • Collaborate
    • Departments
    • Active parent page: News and events
    • People
    • About

Alexander Hicks wins ACE-CSR pitch competition

Breadcrumb trail

  • UCL Engineering
  • News and events

Faculty menu

  • Events
  • Current page: Faculty news
  • UCL News: Engineering

Alexander Hicks

We are delighted to announce that Alexander Hicks recently won the PhD student pitch competition at the annual ACE-CSR conference. Hicks’s winning pitch was on the topic of his research into verifiable auditing of access to confidential data.

The Academic Centres of Excellence in Cyber Security Research (ACE-CSR) scheme continues to play a key role in the Government’s approach to maintaining and enhancing the UK’s reputation as a global leader in cyber security research. The annual conference provides a platform for Government, its delivery partners and researchers in the field of cyber security to discuss and augment their joint work to enhance the UK’s academic capability in all areas relating to cyber security.

Alexander Hicks, who is in the second year of his PhD supervised by Dr. Steven Murdoch, is part of the Information Security research group within UCL Computer Science. His current work is related to evidence and systems that produce evidence. “My research in evidence is related to building transparent and accountable systems,” said Hicks. “This is of particular importance for systems that involve many parties and components, such as human decisions and actions that cannot always be constrained or trusted.”

“The usual goal in security is to build systems that avoid failure in the first place, but that isn’t always realistic. Systems that produce evidence handle the problem by improving transparency and making sure the right parties are liable for failures, which also disincentivises causing failures."

Hicks’s pitch focused on recent work, a system named VAMS that allows verifiable auditing of access to confidential data. The sharing of personal data has the potential to bring substantial benefits both to individuals and society, but these can be achieved only if people have confidence their data will not be used inappropriately. The VAMS system produces evidence of some data being requested and allows data requests to be audited by a general auditor, as well as individuals, who can check how their own data is requested. Auditors can also produce statistics that can be released in a manner that preserves privacy and allows them to be publicly verified. The result is that it is no longer necessary for individuals to trust those requesting the data, those providing the data and those auditing data requests, as each step can be publicly verified.

“We designed this system with two motivational examples in mind. The first of these was law enforcement access to telecommunications data, which I focused on during my pitch at the conference. The second is access to medical records. The system is flexible, so it could be applied to other forms of data sharing.”

Please join us in congratulating Alexander for this prestigious recognition!

You can read Alexander’s full biography on his personal page here.

Read the paper pre-print online here (joint work with Vasilios Mavroudis, Mustafa Al Bassam, Sarah Meiklejohn and Steven Murdoch), for further information on the VAMS system. There is also a blog post here.

Find out more about ACE-CRS here.

More from UCL Engineering...

Engineering Foundation Year
UCL East Marshgate building at dusk

Programme Spotlight

Engineering Foundation Year

We'll help you to gain new knowledge, learn academic and study skills, and develop your confidence levels so you'll have what it takes to transform your life.

Inaugural Lectures
Farhaneen Mazlan delivering a talk at UCL

Event series

Inaugural Lectures

An opportunity to explore ground-breaking research that is shaping the future and transforming the world.

Disruptive Thinkers Video Series
Dr Claire Walsh looking at a human organ in an imaging facility

Watch Now

Disruptive Thinkers Video Series

From making cities more inclusive to using fibre optics in innovative medical procedures, explore the disruptive thinking taking place across UCL Engineering.

UCL footer

Visit

  • Bloomsbury Theatre and Studio
  • Library, Museums and Collections
  • UCL Maps
  • UCL Shop
  • Contact UCL

Students

  • Accommodation
  • Current Students
  • Moodle
  • Students' Union

Staff

  • Inside UCL
  • Staff Intranet
  • Work at UCL
  • Human Resources

UCL social media menu

  • Link to Soundcloud
  • Link to Flickr
  • Link to TikTok
  • Link to Youtube
  • Link to Instagram
  • Link to Facebook
  • Link to Twitter

University College London, Gower Street, London, WC1E 6BT

Tel: +44 (0) 20 7679 2000

© 2025 UCL

Essential

  • Disclaimer
  • Freedom of Information
  • Accessibility
  • Cookies
  • Privacy
  • Slavery statement
  • Log in