The number of senior scientists at CISPA is growing rapidly. In spring, the Helmholtz Center announced that there will be eight new faculty in 2021, bringing the number of senior scientists to 30. Now, another highly renowned researcher is joining the Saarbrücken Helmholtz Center as tenured faculty.
Prof. Dr. Thorsten Holz will join CISPA on October 1, 2021. CISPA founding director Professor Dr. Dr. h.c. Michael Backes is looking forward to the collaboration: "With Thorsten Holz, another excellent researcher comes to CISPA. He has had groundbreaking successes in the field of cybersecurity research in recent years and is considered an international luminary in his field of research. We are delighted that he will now continue his exceptional research at CISPA." Holz's research interests are in the applied aspects of secure IT systems, focusing on system-level IT security.
Currently, he is primarily researching the areas of reverse engineering, automated software vulnerability finding, and analysis of current attack trends. Thorsten Holz graduated with a degree in computer science from RWTH Aachen University in 2005 and completed his doctorate at the University of Mannheim in May 2009. Before moving to Ruhr-Universität Bochum in April 2010, he worked as a postdoc at the Institute for Computer-Aided Automation at the Vienna University of Technology. In 2011, Thorsten Holz received the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize of the DFG and in 2014 an ERC Starting Grant.