PhD Students in Saarbrücken bei CISPA – Helmholtz Zentrum für Informationssicherheit gGmbH

CISPA – Helmholtz-Zentrum für Informationssicherheit gGmbH

Saarbrücken , Deutschland

The CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security is looking for PhD Students in areas related to:

Cybersecurity, Privacy and Cryptography
Machine Learning and Data Science
Efficient Algorithms and Foundations of Theoretical Computer Science
Software Engineering, Program Analysis and Formal Methods

We constantly seek applications from qualified researchers regardless of their national origin or citizenship. The working language is English. A command of German is not required for a successful career at CISPA

What we offer

Admitted students are paid employees of CISPA with a full-time contract of three years with the possibility of one year extension. Salary starting from approx. €4180 (gross/month) according to the scale of the TVöD (German Federal Employment Agreement)
Health insurance, 30 days paid time off and a pension scheme
Opportunities for development and growth from language classes, research support to extracurricular and social activities
Our onboarding team will provide you with all information needed for a successful start and support you if needed

What we expect

You have a Bachelor’s or Master’s degree from a top-tier, research-oriented institutions of higher education in a subject relevant to our research
You should have an outstanding academic record (at or near top of your class)
You’re proficient in spoken and written English
You have strong letters of recommendation from your academic advisors

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Highlighted Positions

The group of Ali Abbasi is offering multiple positions for PhD candidates interested in the area of embedded systems security.

Ali Abbasi's group's main aim is to design defense mechanisms and break existing embedded systems to improve their security. We combine deep technical insights of both firmware and hardware to build novel analysis techniques, allowing us to tackle hard-to-test and previously unknown attack surfaces. We also design and implement new methods to protect embedded systems against various classes of attacks, both on the hardware and firmware level.

For hardware security-oriented Ph.D. positions, we are looking for candidates with a strong interest in:

Hardware-assisted security testing and hardware vulnerabilities
Side-channel attacks (e.g., power analysis and instruction-level side channel profiling)
FPGA programming and system building at the board-level around customized circuits
RISC-V and ideally one of its open source designs
Computer architecture design, simulation, and performance evaluation

For software security-oriented Ph.D. positions, we are looking for candidates with solid programming skills in low-level languages like C/C++/Rust/Assembly and in-depth knowledge of operating systems. The candidate should also be interested in at least one of the following topics:

Firmware reverse engineering and/or exploit development
Automated software testing (e.g., fuzzing), especially with an interest in hardware/software-assisted firmware testing
Space assets security (e.g., in-orbit satellite systems security)
Security of Industrial Control Systems (ICS), Electronic Control Units (ECUs), or mobile basebands

For both types of positions, actively playing CTFs, having a public track record of vulnerability research, or building open-source security analysis tooling is a plus. A person with an offensive security mindset will enjoy the work in our group.

The group of Andreas Zeller is looking for PhD candidates with research interests in program analysis, software testing and automated debugging.

Andreas Zeller's goup's research topics include novel methods for highly efficient software testing; mining specifications for inputs and programs; synthesizing oracles; explaining software failures; and more.

The group of Christian Rossow