Center for Information Security and Trust

Securing critical infrastructure. Strengthening defense resilience.

Research

CISAT spans four interdisciplinary research areas in cybersecurity, from formal methods to the human and societal dimensions of trust.

Cryptography & Secure Computation

Cryptographic protocols, multi-party computation, blockchain consensus, and post-quantum cryptography.

Cryptography MPC Blockchain Consensus

Secure Software

Formal verification, secure software engineering, and other principled approaches for secure and reliable software.

Formal verification Security requirements engineering Language-based security Session types Proof assistants

AI Security & Privacy

Robust and trustworthy AI, privacy-preserving machine learning, secure AI-assisted development, and GDPR compliance.

Robust AI Privacy-preserving ML Secure development GDPR

Democratic Technologies & Digital Trust

E-voting, digital identity, usable security, security governance, and the human and organizational dimensions of trust.

E-voting Digital identity Usable security Governance

Selected Projects

Privacy-Preserving Collaborative Machine Learning

Velux · 2025–

Investigating how multiple parties can train ML models on sensitive data without compromising privacy, combining neuro-symbolic learning with secure multi-party computation.

Optimising Denmark's Cyber Emergency Preparedness

NFC · 2024–2026

Completed project improving national cyber emergency readiness. Final report published at resilienscenter.dk.

Understanding and Supporting Secure AI Tools in Software Development Teams

DIREC · 2025–

Investigating how development teams use and secure AI-assisted software development tools.

Robust AI

NFC & DIREC · 2025–

Advancing robustness and reliability of AI systems.

PROBABILIST

DFF · 2025–2029

Probabilistic session types for reliable concurrent and distributed systems.

Publications: see the full list on the ITU Pure portal.

People

Steering Committee
Carsten Schürmann

Carsten Schürmann

Professor · Head of CISAT
Security analysis, e-voting, digital identity
Morten Hjelholt

Morten Hjelholt

Professor · Head of Research at ITU
Digital governance, IT management
Faculty
Louise Barkhuus

Louise Barkhuus

Professor
Human-centered AI, privacy, social technologies
Alessandro Bruni

Alessandro Bruni

Associate Professor
Formal verification, security protocols, privacy-preserving neurosymbolic AI
Bernardo David

Bernardo David

Associate Professor
Cryptography, MPC, blockchain, consensus
Christopher Gad

Christopher Gad

Associate Professor
Science & technology studies, surveillance, digitalization
Elda Paja

Elda Paja

Associate Professor
Security requirements, threat modelling, socio-technical systems
Marco Carbone

Marco Carbone

Professor
Session types, concurrency, process calculi
Oksana Kulyk

Oksana Kulyk

Associate Professor
Usable security, e-voting, privacy
Raul Pardo

Raul Pardo

Associate Professor
Privacy, formal methods, probabilistic programming
Riko Jacob

Riko Jacob

Associate Professor
Algorithm engineering, complexity
Rosario Giustolisi

Rosario Giustolisi

Associate Professor
Cryptographic protocols, e-voting, accountability
Willard Rafnsson

Willard Rafnsson

Associate Professor
Programming languages, program analysis, information flow
Postdocs
Ricardo Jose Menezes Maia

Ricardo Jose Menezes Maia

Postdoc
Eszter Vigh

Eszter Vigh

Postdoc
PhD Students
Christina Frederikke Nissen

Christina Frederikke Nissen

PhD Student
E-voting, usable security
Markus Krabbe Larsen

Markus Krabbe Larsen

PhD Student
Formal verification, proof assistants
Rahul Bangalore Satish

Rahul Bangalore Satish

PhD Student
MPC, cryptographic protocols
Raha Asadi

Raha Asadi

PhD Student
Secure software development, cybersecurity dilemmas

Join us

Interested in a PhD or postdoc position at CISAT? Check open positions at ITU, or contact any of our faculty directly to discuss potential opportunities.

Alumni

Jonas Kastberg Hinrichsen — now Assistant Professor, Aalborg University

Maryam Sheikhi Garjan — now Postdoc, University of Hamburg

Lorenzo Gentile — now at Consensys

James Hsin-yu Chiang — now Postdoc, Aarhus University

Anders Konring — now at Espresso Systems

Felix Engelman — now Postdoc, Ohio State University

Ravi Kishore — now at BITS

Esra Yeniaras — now at KEA, Copenhagen

Ieva Daukantas — now at Novo Nordisk

Gopinaath Kannabiran

Peter Schneider — now at Everllence, Copenhagen

News & Events

Stay up to date with CISAT research, awards, and talks. Join the CISAT mailing list for announcements.

Recent News

March 2026

Raha Asadi, Signe Louise Yndigegn, and Oksana Kulyk had a paper at CHI ‘26: “Extract Blade Violates Secure Shot: Exquisite Corpse as a Speculative Design Method”.

January 2026

Oksana Kulyk and Elda Paja had a paper accepted at REFSQ: “Security under Pressure: How Agile Teams Experience and Manage Security Requirements” (with Dahlia Thaewjaturat).

January 2026

Paper conditionally accepted at FC Voting: “Flexible Vote Updating: Lessons Learned from a Lab-Based Study” (Harder, Poulsen, Nissen, Kulyk, Giustolisi).

January 2026

Successfully completed NFC-funded project “Optimising Denmark’s Cyber Emergency Preparedness”. Final report published.

November 2025

Raha Asadi co-authored Cyberdilemmaer: Om mødet med virkeligheden, a philanthropic project exploring six central dilemmas in contemporary cybersecurity.

September 2025

Alessandro Bruni received a Velux Experiment Grant (DKK 1.97M) to investigate how multiple parties can collaborate on training machine learning models on sensitive data without compromising privacy, combining neuro-symbolic learning with secure multi-party computation.

See all news →

Upcoming Talks

No upcoming talks scheduled. Check back soon.

Recent Talks

DateSpeakerTopic
16 Apr 2026 Jens Myrup Pedersen, Aalborg University (CPH), Denmark Cyber Ranges: Learning Cybersecurity through gamification and virtual labs
15 Apr 2026 Sepideh Ghanavati, University of Maine, USA From Developer Insights to LLM-Powered Privacy Solutions
27 Mar 2026 Rob Gleasure, CBS, Denmark Cognitive warfare and scientific research in the Nordics
24 Mar 2026 David Sands, Chalmers University of Technology and the University of Gothenburg, Sweden The LLMbda Calculus: AI Agents, Conversations, and Information Flow
13 Mar 2026 Peter Meyer, SDU, Denmark Cybersecurity and Privacy for Everyone

See all talks → · Contact Carsten Schürmann to propose a talk.

About

CISAT is the focal point for research and education in cybersecurity at the IT University of Copenhagen, created to protect critical infrastructure sectors across Europe.

Vision

To be a leading center of excellence in cybersecurity and trust research, supporting defense and security communities in shaping resilient, reliable, and ethically grounded digital infrastructures for future missions.

Mission

To advance research and education in cybersecurity, resilience, and trust, enabling defense to safeguard critical infrastructure and mitigate digital threats.

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Construction

Reliability, security by design, language-based security, continuous deployment

Verification

Adversary and risk modeling, cyber attack detection, theorem proving, model checking

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Organizations

Trustability, governance, legislation, and organizational effects of cybersecurity

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Society

Human perceptions of trust, ethics, privacy, and cognitive aspects of security

Courses

CISAT faculty teach research-led cybersecurity courses at ITU at both BSc and MSc level.

Contact

Science & Collaboration

Carsten Schürmann

Professor, Head of CISAT
(+45) 26 39 36 06

Media & Press

Jari Kickbusch

Research Communicator
(+45) 22 48 28 27

Stay Updated

Join the CISAT mailing list for news and talk announcements.