New ATHENE professorship strengthens position as a leading cybersecurity research center

Darmstadt, 30.01.2026. Prof. Adi Akavia, an inter­nationally recognized expert in applied cybersecurity, took up an ATHENE professorship at the Department of Computer Science at TU Darmstadt and the position as head of department at the Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology SIT at the beginning of the year. The dual role combines cutting-edge academic research with practical application in a key area of cybersecurity.

Building bridges between theory and practice

Prof. Adi Akavia is one of the leading experts in applied cybersecurity research. She combines two currently particularly important areas of computer science: cybersecurity and artificial intelligence. How can machine learning, the basis of modern AI, be secured in such a way that confidentiality, data protection, and data sovereignty are maintained? With her research, Adi Akavia builds bridges between the theoretical foundations of cryptography and the practical application of AI. Her research has been applied in fields such as medicine and bioinformatics.

Adi Akavia has an excellent inter­national network: after studying in Israel, in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, she earned her doctorate at the renowned MIT in Boston under Prof. Shafi Goldwasser, one of the pioneers of modern cryptography. This was followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at Princeton with Prof. Avi Wigderson, also a pioneer of modern cryptography and, like Shafi Goldwasser, a recipient of the Turing Award. After further research fellowships at Rutgers University and the Weizmann Institute of Science, she became a professor at the University of Haifa in 2018 and head of the biometrics research group at the Haifa Center for Cyber Law & Policy.

“I am very much looking forward to working with my new colleagues”, said Adi Akavia. “ATHENE and TU Darmstadt offer a unique environment for combining cutting-edge academic research with real impact in industry and society. There are few places in the world that can compete with Darmstadt in this regard.”

“I am delighted that we have recruited Professor Akavia, an inter­nationally renowned expert in her field, to TU Darmstadt and thereby further strengthened the close ties between the university and ATHENE,” explained Prof. Tanja Brühl, President of TU Darmstadt. “With her innovative and forward-looking research, Adi Akavia will bolster our renowned field of information and intelligence research in the long term. At the same time, she will provide important impetus for interdisciplinary cooperation projects and practical applications by fruitfully combining artificial intelligence with cybersecurity issues.”

With Professor Adi Akavia, we are gaining an outstanding scientist who will help ATHENE further expand its leading role in German cybersecurity research and, in particular, strengthen its expertise at the intersection of cybersecurity and artificial intelligence,” says Prof. Michael Waidner, ATHENE CEO and head of Fraunhofer SIT. “The fact that we have been able to recruit such a renowned scientist underscores the inter­national appeal of the location and the considerable attractiveness that Hesse and Germany enjoy abroad in our field of research.”

Press Photo 1
Caption: f.l.t.r.: Prof. Dr. Michael Waidner, ATHENE | TU Darmstadt | Fraunhofer SIT; Prof. Dr. Adi Akavia, ATHENE | TU Darmstadt | Fraunhofer SIT; Prof. Dr. Tanja Brühl, TU Darmstadt
Copyright: Patrick Bal

Press Photo 2
Caption: f.l.t.r.: Prof. Dr. Adi Akavia, ATHENE | TU Darmstadt | Fraunhofer SIT
Copyright: Patrick Bal