CISPA colleagues thank founding director Michael Backes

CISPA began in 2011 with his personal vision of establishing a research center dedicated to the challenges of cybersecurity. He drove the realization of that vision through its formative years, culminating in CISPA’s admission to the Helmholtz Association as its nineteenth research center in January 2019.

As founding director, he made a substantial contribution to establishing CISPA as one of the world’s leading centers for cybersecurity research. Over these years, the center brought together leading researchers from around the world and developed a broad scientific program covering cybersecurity and trustworthy AI.

For us as colleagues, this history is also the history of the institution in which we pursue our research, develop our careers, and contribute through scientific, technical, and administrative work. Building CISPA has been a shared undertaking involving many people and partners. We thank Michael Backes for his substantial contribution to this shared achievement. We wish him all the best for the future, and we will continue to push for scientific excellence.