Our
Research

Research Areas

ATHENE is accompanying the digitalization of society, economy and government from the perspective of cybersecurity and privacy with application-oriented cutting-edge research and development. The research is divided into various research areas headed by coordinators. In projects assigned to these research areas, concepts, methods and technologies are being developed that sustainably improve and ensure cyber security and privacy protection across all areas of life. An interdisciplinary approach to the problems involves different sciences such as psychology, ergonomics, economics, etc.


Category according to ACM classification:

Applied computingComputer systems organizationComputing methodologiesGeneral and referenceHardwareHuman-centered computingInformation systemsNetworksSecurity and privacySocial and professional topicsSoftware and its engineeringTheory of computation

Analytics Based Cybersecurity (ABC)

Coordinator:
Prof. Haya Shulman
  • ABC New Directions
    Prof. Haya Shulman
  • Active Cyber Defense
    Prof. Haya Shulman
  • Collaborative P2P Botnet Monitoring and Data-Analysis
    Prof. Max Mühlhäuser
  • Research Platform Internet Cybersecurity
    Prof. Haya Shulman
  • Routing Security
    Prof. Haya Shulman
  • SecSan
    Prof. Michael Waidner
  • Security of Critical Infrastructures
    Prof. Haya Shulman
  • Code transformers and knowledge graphs for ​vulnerability detection
    Prof. Mira Mezini
  • Cross-Language Library-Aware Security Analysis of Complex Software Systems
    Prof. Mira Mezini
  • Enhanced Vulnerability Detection
    Dr. Steven Arzt
  • Visual and User-Centric Support for Verifying and Avoiding Vulnerabilities
    Prof. Jörn Kohlhammer

Cryptography (Crypto)

Coordinator:
Prof. Marc Fischlin
  • Agile and Easy-to-use Integration of PQC Schemes
    Prof. Andreas Heinemann
    Prof. Alexander Wiesmaier
  • Cryptography and Game Theory for Decentralized Exchanges
    Prof. Sebastian Faust
  • High Performance Implementations of PQC Schemes
    Norman Lahr
  • Leakage Models for Masking: Bridging the gap between theory and practice
    Prof. Sebastian Faust
  • PORTUNUS
    Prof. Andreas Koch
  • PQC Building Blocks for eCard Applications - Quantum-resilient PACE
    Prof. Alexander Wiesmaier
  • Quantum-Resistance of Symmetric-Key Primitives
    Prof. Marc Fischlin

Legal Aspects of Privacy and IT Security (LeAP)

Coordinators:
Dr. Annika Selzer
Prof. Indra Spiecker gen. Döhmann
  • Systematic privacy for large, real-life data processing systems
    Dr. Annika Selzer
  • Legal framework for offensive cybersecurity research (LegRes)
    Dr. Annika Selzer
  • Privacy at Large (P@L)
    Dr. Annika Selzer

Next Generation Biometric Systems (NGBS)

Coordinators:
Prof. Christian Rathgeb
Prof. Christoph Busch
Dr. Naser Damer
  • Biometric sample quality assessment
    Florian Kirchbuchner, M. Sc.
    Dr. Olaf Henniger
  • Embedded Biometrics
    Florian Kirchbuchner, M. Sc.
    Dr. Naser Damer
  • Fair Biometric Systems ​
    Prof. Christoph Busch
  • Operational Challenges in Face Recognition
    Prof. Christoph Busch
    Prof. Christian Rathgeb
  • Secure Identity Management
    Florian Kirchbuchner, M. Sc.
    Dr. Naser Damer

OPen and Sustainable IoT Security (OPSIS)

Acting Coordinator:
Dr. Thorsten Henkel
  • Cryptographic Evaluation of Bluetooth (CryptoBlue)
    Prof. Marc Fischlin
  • Efficient practical tests of the security properties of IoT systems through the use of novel return channels (ETCH)
  • Next Generation Secure Wireless Communications (NGWiSec)
    Prof. Matthias Hollick
    Dr. Jiska Classen
  • Open Side-Channel-Resilient Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) Design (TrusTEE)
    Prof. Ahmad-Reza Sadeghi
  • Secure Hardware Monitors for Data and Control Flows (SHMoDaCo)
    Prof. Andreas Koch
  • Security and Privacy of IoT Communication Technologies (SPIC)
  • Cross-Domain Disinformation Analysis (CRISIS)
    Prof. Martin Steinebach
  • Deepfake REcognition and Artificial Media (DREAM)
    Prof. Martin Steinebach

Secure Autonomous Driving (SAD)

Coordinator:
Prof. Christoph Krauß
  • Automotive Forensic Processing (AuFoP)
    Prof. Christoph Busch
  • SECurity Test and Evaluation platform for Autonomous driving – used for IDPS (SECTEA)
  • Collecting and Sharing Distributed Medical Data of a Digital Twin - Securely, Privacy-friendly and User-centered
    Prof. Jörn Kohlhammer
  • Disinformation and Corona
    Prof. Martin Steinebach
  • Fake News and Conspiracy Theories
    Prof. Iryna Gurevych
  • JAB Codes for Secure Ad-hoc Documents
    Prof. Martin Steinebach
  • Privacy-Aware Domain-Adaptive Medical NLP (PADAM)
    Prof. Iryna Gurevych
  • Quality Assurance of Biomedical Literature
    Prof. Iryna Gurevych

Secure Urban Infrastructures (SecUrban)

Coordinator:
Prof. Christian Reuter
  • Architecture and Processes for Effective Cybersecurity and Privacy Protection in Smart Cities (SecArch)
    Prof. Haya Shulman
  • Integrating Safety and Security Aspects in Secure Urban Infrastructures (SaSec)
    Prof. Joachim Vogt
  • Secure Urban Mesh Networks (Smesh)
    Prof. Matthias Hollick
  • Security Modelling and Si­mu­la­tion of Secure Urban Infrastructures (SeMS)
    Prof. Max Mühlhäuser
  • Security of Urban Infrastructures Against Cyberattacks (SecAttack)
    Prof. Christian Reuter
  • Adversarial Attacks on NLP systems
    Prof. Iryna Gurevych
  • EXplainable REinforcement Learning for Secure Intelligent Systems (XReLeaS)
    Prof. Jan Peters
    Prof. Kristian Kersting
  • Protecting Privacy and Sensitive Information in Texts
    Prof. Iryna Gurevych
  • Robustness in Machine Learning (RoMa)
    Prof. Martin Steinebach
  • Security and Privacy in Automated OSINT (SePiA)
    Prof. Martin Steinebach

Trustworthy Data Ecosystems (TRUDATA)

Coordinators:
Prof. Carsten Binnig
Prof. Sebastian Faust
  • Encryption Meets Search
    Prof. Marc Fischlin
  • Hardware-assisted Data Protection
    Prof. Ahmad-Reza Sadeghi
  • Model-centric Deductive Verification of Smart Contracts
    Dr. Richard Bubel
    Prof. Reiner Hähnle
  • Probabilistic Data Structures in Adversarial Environments
    Dr. Jean Paul Degabriele
  • Securing Refinements of Distributed Workflows
    Prof. Heiko Mantel
  • Trusted Multiparty Computation as a Service
    Prof. Sebastian Faust
  • Trusted Utilization of Personal Data
    Prof. Mira Mezini

User-centered Security and Privacy (UCSP)

Coordinators:
Prof. Max Mühlhäuser
Prof. Peter Buxmann
Prof. Andreas Heinemann
  • Comprehensive Probabilistic QoSec-Assessment (ComPAss)
    Prof. Max Mühlhäuser
  • Fingerprinting Detection and Remediation in Mobile Apps​
    Dr. Jens Heider
  • User-Centered Technology Design for Cyber Situational Awareness
    Prof. Christian Reuter
  • Visualization-based Technologies as Enablers for Privacy Sovereignty Online (PriVis)
    Prof. Jörn Kohlhammer