Bye Bye Copenhagen!

Outside, I bump into CISPA-Faculty Sven Bugiel. We get talking and somehow stumble onto  the topic of paper reviews. It`s another much discussed topic at these conferences how the review process can grow healthily with the growing number of researchers. This is how the selection of reviewers currently works: Bids are placed on papers. In my mind's eye, I can see Sven and Ben betting all their chips on a paper in the casino. But I quickly realize that it's not quite that exciting after all. "We indicate on a scale from minus 20 to plus 20 how much we would like to review a paper. Of course, it doesn't mainly depend on how interesting I find a topic - maybe that too - but above all on how well I know the field," says Sven and continues: "In the end, there are always five reviewers per paper. So there are usually people among them who are not top experts in the field. They tend to hold back with strong evaluations."

Just like in summer at the USENIX Symposium, I notice more than just a slight fatigue on the third day of the conference. The constant noise level, the many conversations and the attempt to soak up as much knowledge as possible is quite draining. And so I'm glad when the working day finally comes to an enlightening end with a presentation by CISPA PhD student Zeyang Sha on recognizing fake images. In the evening, we visit the Tivoli Gardens, a historical theme park in Copenhagen, which is simply magical at Christmas time, with all the lights shining bright and even a female fawn that unexpectedly crosses our path. We take a few more photos with our colleagues Nabila Luscher and Lena Gotsche from the Scientific Talent Acquisition department for our CISPA Christmas calendar to close off the day.

On Thursday, the biggest hype is already over. Many researchers have already left. A much smaller group still meets for the workshops, which to be honest are not much different from the rest of the conference. Here, too, researchers present their work to the plenary session, concentrating on a specific topic. There is also a small poster session in the room, which invites people to exchange ideas. I'm delighted to be there today because I heard a rumor that Sahar Abdelnabi, one of our PhD students, is to receive a Best Paper Award. Sahar is a researcher in the team of CISPA-Faculty Mario Fritz. Mario heads the ELSA network of excellence, for whose communication I am jointly responsible. She is presenting a highly regarded paper here this afternoon: Together with the Saarbrücken-based company Sequire Technology, she and other CISPA researchers uncovered glaring security gaps in the first freely accessible version of ChatGPT shortly after it was published. The paper actually received an award here, which makes me very happy and visibly touches Sahar.