Briana Bowen
Prior to joining the CDT, Briana cofounded and served as Associate Director of the Center for Anticipatory Intelligence at Utah State University, codesigning and teaching in the US’s first academic curriculum in the field of anticipatory intelligence. She has served as co-PI of a Minerva Research Initiative grant focused on human governance implications of emerging AI applications and is a coeditor of the Routledge Handbook of Strategic Culture. Briana completed a BA in Political Science at Utah State University and MPhil in Russian and East European Studies at Oxford. Her research focuses concentrate on Russian security affairs, weapons of mass destruction, emerging disruptive technologies, and strategic culture.
Alexis Butler
Alexis completed a BSC in Computer Science at the University of Surrey, while working as a research engineer, as part of an AutoML and automated software engineering company. She has previously worked on automated software optimisation and synthesis research. Alexis’ research interests focus on the interface between the open source and industrial communities and its implications for supply chain security.
Stephen Cook
Stephen has completed an undergraduate degree in Computer Science BSC (hons) at York St John university. He then went on to complete a Masters in cyber security at Newcastle University, achieving a distinction. After graduating, he was a software developer at SAGE PLC working on wide range of projects. He has recently been employed as a research assistant on the CyFer project at Royal Holloway University. His main area of interest is IoT & Smart device security and privacy with a particular focus being on Medical IoT devices, and the application of machine learning techniques to improve the security and privacy auditing of these devices.
Katy Craven
Katy has a BSc in Mathematics from the University of Central Lancashire and an MSc in the Mathematics of Cryptography and Communications from Royal Holloway, graduating in 2022 with distinction. Katy's main interest lies in time delay cryptography, and her master's dissertation focused on the development hash functions.
Xiaohui Ding
Xiaohui (Daisy) Ding holds a Bachelor's degree in Mathematical Physics from University of Waterloo, Canada and a Bachelor's degree in Information and Computing Science from Shandong Normal University, China. Following this, she pursued a Master's degree in Cybersecurity at Monash University in Australia, where her master's thesis centred on calculating injectivity for select post-quantum cryptography schemes.
Between her Bachelor's and Master's degrees, Daisy worked as a teacher for A-level Further Mathematics and AMC competitions. Subsequently, during the gap between her Master's and Ph.D., she worked as a cryptography researcher focusing on hardware arithmetic, including NTT acceleration, and exploring cryptographic techniques like FHE, MPC, and their applications on PPML.
Daisy possesses a broad range of interests in mathematics and cryptography. Her research primarily revolves around tight security proofs in the Quantum Random Oracle Model and lattice cryptanalysis and/or reductions. She also plays CTF Crypto track in her spare time.
Arshia Dutta
Prior to joining the CDT, Arshia completed her graduation and post-graduation in Sociology, in India. During this time, she published two papers in the JU Journal and Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences. She was also a Research Assistant in two projects funded by Boston University and IIT Kharagpur, respectively. In 2020, Arshia was a Policy Research Intern for the Department of School Education, Government of the Union Territory of Jammu, India. After her masters, she worked with ImpactDash, a Mumbai based CSR Consultancy firm where she was Field Manager and Project Head in 2022-2023. During this time, she took interest in the Computer Ethics research group in IIT Delhi and consulted on a body of Literature for Technicians at an undergraduate level. Her inclination towards Ethnography and Field Survey was developed in a departmental project which looked into the experience of the marginalised community in her university, as they tried to navigate a crisis with limited access to and understanding of ICT.
Rebecca Jones
Rebecca completed her multidisciplinary BSc with the Open University whilst working a variety of jobs in community care, hospitality, and teaching in the UK, and abroad. Her MSc in Engineering at Cardiff University focused on space technology innovation. Rebecca has spent the last three years working within cybersecurity, data and digital development within the civil service. This cross governmental career gives Rebecca a wealth of experience in the way that cyber impacts the everyday, the practicality of modern cyber security for government, international collaboration, and citizen safety. She is interested in cyber security inequalities, the policy opportunities and challenges of emerging technologies, and the impact of cyber security on international collaboration and diplomacy.
Aikaterini Mavrona
Prior to joining the CDT, Katerina worked as a policy analyst based in Brussels researching EU policies on emerging and disruptive technologies (EDTs), the broader EU digital portfolio, as well as EU-NATO relations in cybersecurity and defence. She was also a Schuman trainee for the European Science Media Hub of the European Parliament Research Service. She holds a BSc in Politics and International Relations from the University of London, an MSc in Global Politics from the LSE, and an MSc in European Integration from the VUB-IES in Brussels. Before returning to academia to pursue her studies in international politics she worked in news reporting for more than ten years. She was a photojournalist for the Athens News Agency in Greece, and later worked as an analyst on foreign policy and defence contributing to a variety of news outlets. Her research interests focus on modes of international cooperation for the governance of digital technologies, as well as geopolitical contestation within global and regional Standard Setting Organizations in the fields of information security and EDTs.
Mbabazi Annet Ntezi
Mbabazi holds a Master's degree in International Cooperation and Development from Universita Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, Italy, and a Bachelor's degree in Community Psychology from Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda.
She has over 10 years’ of experience in conducting research and implementing development programs within the expansive domain of governance and politics in Uganda and other African contexts. Her academic and professional pursuits are driven by her passion for contributing to solutions to Africa's governance and developmental challenges.
Her research interests revolve around political contests, governance, and democratic processes and their intersection with information security. Of particular interest is her investigation into security practices among groups actively engaged in political protests and activism, shedding light on the contemporary socio-political dynamics and exploring the impact of information technologies on their strategies and actions.
Oliver Pearce
Oliver achieved a first-class BSc in Computer Science specialising in Information Security at Royal Holloway, University of London, he went on to work as a lead tester for Gartner. His areas of interest include binary analysis, system and software security and machine learning.
Connor Pfreundschuh
Connor has a Bachelor of Engineering degree in Electronic Engineering from King’s College London. He then completed a Master of Science degree in Advanced Computing at King’s College London, graduating with a distinction. In his MSc thesis, Connor explored different methods for detecting and analysing potential hate speech on social media, specifically focusing on political fora on Reddit. His research interests lie in developing user-centred and verifiable security systems for IoT devices, particularly when such devices are in insecure environments
Gabriella Williams
Gabriella has completed an undergraduate degree in Criminology & Sociology BSc (hons) at the University of Kent. She then went on to complete a master’s degree in cybersecurity at the same university. Her master’s dissertation focused on sexual harassment in the metaverse, examining the cultural, legal, and social implications of the way we understand criminality; criminalistic behaviour in virtual reality platforms, specifically in regard to the security and privacy issues surrounding the metaverse and virtual reality. After graduating, she was employed as a research associate at the University of Kent, investigating what type of impact the Summer Vacation Research competition had on students, with a particular focus on understanding how it had supported marginalized students, and the effect that it had on them. Gabriella’s area of interests lies in the criminological and sociological framework of cybersecurity, particularly on the issue of sexual harassment in the metaverse and virtual reality platforms and our understanding of how we define criminality in a technologically dependent society.