I am a Senior Lecturer in Cybersecurity at the School of Computing, Engineering and Digital Technologies. My main research interests are languages and tools for security and applied formal methods for security.

I hold a PhD in Computer Science from Ca' Foscari University Venice, Italy, an MSc in Computer Science from University of Udine, Italy and a PGCert in Academic Practice from University of Sunderland, UK.

Before joining Teesside University, I worked as a lecturer at the University of Sunderland, as a post-doctoral research associate at Newcastle University where I contributed to the EU FutureID project. I have been a visiting researcher at the Technical University of Denmark and Telcordia Technologies (USA).

I have also worked as a teacher of Computer Science for the Italian Ministry of Education, as an IT senior officer for the Italian Revenue Agency and as an IT security advisor for the European Union CAFAO mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

I am a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and a licensed professional engineer (IT sector/Italy/EU).

My main research interests are applied formal methods for security, focusing on specification language design, modelling and verification of security protocols and automatic generation of security protocols implementations. I developed tools for security using object oriented and functional programming languages.

For more information about my research activities visit my website.

I am interested in working with bright, motivated PhD students who have strong interest in Cybersecurity.

Applicants with a solid background in Computer Science (e.g. programming languages, compiler construction, formal methods, logics, etc.) willing to research security topics are also welcome.

Indicative research topics:

• Security Protocols
• Applied Formal Methods for Security: Formal Verification of Protocols and Applications, Verification Tools, ...
• Automatic Generation of Security Protocols Implementations, Code Generation
• Security APIs, Programming Abstractions for Security
• Language Based Security
• Model Driven Development
• Security Evaluation
• Java Security
• Android Security
• Applied Cryptography
• Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies
• E-Payments Protocols
• Next-generation Ethical Hacking Tools

Feel free to contact me directly to discuss interest in working with me.

Some funding opportunities are available here.

Conferences - Program Committee Member:

• ACM Symposium on Applied Computing - Computer Security Track
• International Workshop on Formal Analysis and Verification of Post-Quantum Cryptographic Protocols (FAVPQC)
• IEEE International Workshop on Reliability and Security Data Analysis (RSDA)
• International Conference on Emerging Security Information, Systems and Technologies (Securware)

Conferences - Reviewer:

• IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN)
• IEEE International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering Workshops (ISSREW)
• International Conference on Integrated Formal Methods (iFM)

Journals - Reviewer:

• Computers & Security
• IEEE Transactions in Information Forensics and Security (TIFS)
• Journal of Information Security and Applications (JISA)
• Journal of Cybersecurity and Privacy (JCP)
• Journal of Communications (JCM)
• Cryptography
• Applied Sciences
• Electronics
• Sensors

• Course Leader: BSc Cyber Security, BSc Cybersecurity and Networks
• Module Leader:  Ethical Hacking, Security Analysis , Ethical Hacking Techniques, Security Analyst, CIS Cyber
• PhD, MSc, BSc project supervision