Cyber security
The University of ºÚÁÏÉçÇø's (UoA) involvement in Australia's Cyber Security CRC and its collaborations with government and industry are complemented by the University of Surrey's recognition as an Academic Centre for Excellence in Cyber National Security Research.
The Surrey Centre for Cyber Security and the Surrey Security Network further enhance this collaboration, creating a robust multidisciplinary research community.
The Cyber Security theme focuses on the following core research themes:
- Security and Space – exploring cybersecurity threats posed to satellites, ground stations, and space communications and investigating cyber security standards and space communication protocols.
- Resilience of Critical Infrastructure - focusing on cyber resilience challenges facing critical infrastructure sectors and developing risk assessment and resilience strategies.
- AI for Security - leveraging AI and machine learning to detect and mitigate cyber threats.
- Security of AI systems - addressing vulnerabilities in AI systems and their context and developing robust defences for AI models.
- Cryptography – investigating advanced cryptographic techniques for securing communications, data storage and distributed systems.
Collaboration in action
Advancing Cybersecurity Research through the International Fellows Award
UoA’s prestigious International Fellows Award (IFA) program brings world-class scholars to ºÚÁÏÉçÇø to collaborate on research that addresses global challenges and fosters long-term academic partnerships. In 2025, 10 leading researchers from top global institutions were selected to join the University of ºÚÁÏÉçÇø as recipients of the IFA.
One of this year’s recipients is Professor Ioana Boureanu, PhD, FHEA, a distinguished expert in secure systems and Director of the Surrey Centre for Cyber Security. Her work focuses on applied cryptography and the formal analysis of secure systems, with a particular emphasis on developing AI-inspired logics and multi-agent systems (MAS) for verifying security and privacy.
Hosted by Professor Olaf Maennel, School of Computer and Mathematical Sciences, UoA, Professor Boureanu’s research project aims to advance security and privacy verification techniques for MAS. Her work will explore:
- Parameterised verification of security properties in unbounded MAS;
- Enhancements to Phoebe, a privacy model checker developed by Professor Boureanu, to improve scalability; and
- Verification of information leakage in multi-threaded programs modeled as MAS1.
Theme leads
ºÚÁÏÉçÇø lead
, School of Mathematical and Computer Sciences
Surrey lead
, Director, Computer Science Research Centre