Where did you grow up, and what shaped you there, especially in terms of technology, science, or entrepreneurship?
Kevin Morio: I grew up in a small town in Rhineland-Palatinate, just over the Saarland border. Early on I loved figuring out how things fit together. As a kid I built elaborate LEGO models, and my dad kept handing me old devices and electronics to take apart, which fed my urge to understand how everything worked inside. That grew into a broader fascination with how almost everything in science and everyday life connects, often in surprising ways. Looking back, I was always hunting for the underlying concepts and larger systems that tie things together, and I had a habit of spotting a problem and wanting to find a way to solve it.
Was there a moment during your studies or early in your career when you realized: "Research is my path"?
It came early, already during my bachelor's. The part I enjoyed most was finding the right abstraction or formalization for a messy problem, the moment when a tangle of details resolves into a clear underlying structure. The theory-heavy side of computer science pulled me in: formalization, abstraction, computational thinking. Over time I realized I wanted to do more than learn existing ideas; I wanted to try out my own and build on what others had done. Which is, more or less, what research is.
When did you first have the thought that you wanted to not only do research, but also build a company?
Throughout my studies, I understood concepts best when theory and practice met, when an idea had to survive contact with the real world. Even back then, friends and I would toss around startup and product ideas, half-wondering what it would take to make them real, and I loved exploring problems and thinking my way toward solutions. During my PhD it became concrete: I saw that our research could grow into a real solution with meaningful impact on people's lives, well beyond an academic result.
Was there a specific turning point or situation that triggered this decision?
It built up gradually. As we developed our tool during the research and saw how well it performed and how many different ways it could be applied, commercializing it felt more and more compelling.
What role did the wish to turn research into practical applications play in this?
A central one. Research lets me build a stable foundation for a practical application, and practice in turn reveals the current limitations and points to the next research questions. I've come to see that loop as a kind of validation of the research itself. If it holds up in the real world, the science was sound.
What was the hardest thought you had to work through before taking this step?
The biggest question I had to sit with was whether to take the leap, knowing success was far from certain, when the more established options, like moving into industry or continuing in research, were open to me. Making peace with that uncertainty, and deciding the upside was worth it, was the real work.
"Making peace with that uncertainty, and deciding the upside was worth it, was the real work."
How did your path evolve across different countries, universities, or research cultures?
My academic home stayed constant: bachelor's, master's, and PhD all at Saarland University and CISPA. The travel came with the research. During my PhD I went to conferences and workshops around the world, met brilliant people, exchanged ideas, and got to experience different cultures and ways of seeing things. CISPA itself is also deeply international, so even at home I worked alongside colleagues from all over the world.
What shaped, or perhaps challenged, you most about working in international teams?
Mostly the realization that people from different backgrounds bring different priorities to the same piece of work. What counts as the important part of a problem varies from one culture to the next. Learning to read those differences and work with them was both a challenge and one of the more rewarding parts of the job.
Was there a gap between what you expected of research or founding and what you actually experienced?
The biggest surprise was how wide the gap is between something that works on paper and software that behaves correctly once it's running in the real world. A design can look completely correct in theory and still be a long way from something people can rely on day to day. You can usually tell whether a piece of research is good in the academic sense; what's far harder to see in advance is whether it will hold up in practice, once it meets messy real-world systems and the constraints that come with them. That gap is exactly the one SpecMon sets out to close, so in a way my own path from research toward a product mirrors the problem the product addresses.
What specifically motivated you to join the CISPA Founders Fellowship?
The chance to seriously pursue commercializing my project and to map out the strongest path from research result to real company, in an environment built to support exactly that.
Was there a particular moment or conversation that convinced you?
It grew out of many conversations over the years. Above all, my supervisor, Robert Künnemann, encouraged me along this path throughout our time working together, and that steady encouragement ultimately shaped my decision.
Tell us about your startup idea.
Almost everything we do online relies on security protocols: the agreed rules that let two systems exchange data safely, behind things like online banking, encrypted messaging, or a VPN. We can prove mathematically that the design of such a protocol is secure. The catch is that the proof only covers the design on paper. It's a bit like proving on paper that 2 + 2 = 4 while the calculator in your hand insists the answer is 5: the maths can be flawless, yet the software we use every day can behave differently from the design that was checked.
SpecMon closes that gap. While security-critical software is running, we continuously check its behavior against a precise description of how it is supposed to behave. If it does something it shouldn't, say, quietly forwarding a message to a third party it was never meant to reach, SpecMon can flag it instantly or shut the connection down. We turn trust in secure software into something you can check, rather than something you simply have to assume.
How has your daily life or way of thinking changed since becoming a Fellow?
I've learned to care more about the big picture than the details, to focus on what's essential, and that clear communication is decisive. Often more decisive than being right about a technicality.
What kind of support has been most valuable to you so far?
So far, the most valuable part has been the thorough evaluation of my initial application. Having the idea assessed that carefully, and early, gave me a clear and substantive read on where it stood, which is exactly the kind of input that counts at this stage.
This program is designed to empower Ph.D. students, postdoctoral researchers, and exceptional MSc students, to transform their innovative research in the fields of information security, privacy, and AI/ML into successful startups. On this site we provide you with a comprehensive overview of the program, its objectives, eligibility criteria, benefits, structure, and the application process.
If your startup is successful in five years, what will concretely have changed?
Trust in software will be something you can verify securely and that anyone can check, instead of taking it on faith. The effort and the expertise needed to do that will have dropped, and the tools will be more user-friendly and faster than they are today. Put simply, you shouldn't have to take a security vendor at their word. I'd like "trust me" to stop being an acceptable answer. And on a personal level, I hope to keep doing exactly this: turning research into real improvements to people's lives, and continuing to expand the vision and bring new scientific ideas into the world.
What problem do you really want to solve with your idea, beyond the technology itself?
Beyond the technology itself, I care about who gets to benefit. Strong guarantees about software should be within reach for everyone, from a small open-source project to a large institution, and form a dependable foundation for the digital communication we all rely on every day. I'd like that kind of confidence to be widely shared, so that secure, trustworthy systems become the normal baseline rather than a privilege of the few with deep resources.
And if you finished the sentence "Founding a company means to me…", how would you end it?
…turning an idea I believe in into something real, and seeing a vision through to the point where it helps people in their daily lives. SpecMon matters deeply to me, and founding is how I pour everything I have into making it happen. It also lets me bring my own perspective to the work, and that distinct way of seeing things is part of what sets my approach apart.
