The Center for Information Security and Trust (CISAT) at the IT University of Copenhagen invites highly motivated individuals to apply for a PhD position. CISAT provides a multidisciplinary research environment, delivering knowledge and capacity necessary to tackle modern cybersecurity challenges from a societal, legal, organizational, and technical point of view.The position is fully funded by Independent Research Fund Denmark (DFF) for a duration of 3 years, starting on 1 December 2023 or soon thereafter.
The IT University’s vision is to create and share knowledge that is profound and leads to groundbreaking information technology and services for the benefit of humanity. The Computer Science Department seeks to conduct research and education that are both foundational and have impact on industry and society.
The project:
The goal of the project is to integrate methods from cryptography and human-centered security to design and evaluate usable and coercion-resistant Internet voting systems. Coercion is known to be an issue in Internet voting since the voters cast their vote in an uncontrolled environment (i.e. from their home/workplace). While several proposals for coercion-resistant voting exist, they have usability issues that potentially prevent them from being securely used in practice.
Job tasks:
The research in the project will have a strong emphasis on empirical studies and will focus on the following tasks:
1) Studying state-of-art proposals for coercion-resistant voting with regards to their security properties such as verifiability and potential of being suitable for use in practice
2) Developing methods for coercion-resistant authentication and evaluating them via empirical studies
3) Designing and evaluating a coercion-resistant Internet voting system
4) Publishing and presenting the findings of the project at academic venues
The ideal candidate should have strong skills in both technical and socio-technical aspects of cybersecurity, with a research background in at least one such areas as cryptography, human-computer interaction, socio-technical systems, psychology, or related fields. Experience with election security is an advantage.
General information
The IT University of Copenhagen (ITU) is a teaching and research-based tertiary institution concerned with information technology (IT) and the opportunities it offers. The IT University has more than 160 full-time Faculty members. Research and teaching in information technology span all academic activities which involve computers including computer science, information and media sciences, humanities and social sciences, business impact and the commercialization of IT.
Successful applicants will be employed and enrolled at the ITU University for a period of 3 years.
Qualification Requirements
The following qualifications are required:
- 3 year programme: candidates should have an MSc (or equivalent)
Salary Appointment and salary will be in accordance with the Ministry of Finance’s agreement with the Danish Confederation of Professional Associations (AC).
Application The application must be in English and must include:
- A cover letter;
- A statement of purpose, which provides evidence of independent thinking, novelty and originality, and a state of the art grasp of the targeted research field matching the project description above;
- Documentation of academic degree(s); grade transcripts that documents outstanding academic achievement;
- Curriculum Vitae, which must include two professional/academic references;
- Applications may also include a relevant scientific publication written by the applicant, or the applicants master thesis.
- Letters of recommendation can also be included in the application
Applications without the above-mentioned
required documents will not be assessed.
The applicant will be assessed according to the Appointment Order from the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation of 13 March 2012.
The IT University may use shortlisting in connection to the recruitment process. In case of shortlisting, the Chair of the hiring committee selects applicants for assessment in consultation with the hiring committee after the application deadline. All applicants are notified whether their application has been passed for assessment. The shortlisting of candidates for assessment is based on the criteria in the job posting.
Early contact with our faculty staff is encouraged.
Questions about the positions can be directed to Associate Professor, Oksana Kulyk, IT University of Copenhagen,
okku@itu.dk.
Application procedure You can apply for this position through our e-recruitment system. Apply by pressing the button "Apply for position" in the job announcement on our
website.
Please read the guidelines for applicants carefully before filling in the application form. You can see the guidelines through this
link.
Applications should be written in English. All other documents, such as transcripts should be accompanied by a translation in English or Danish.
Please note that all application material will be destroyed after the assessment.
Application deadline:
3 October 2023 at 23:59 CET. Applications/enclosures received at ITU after the application deadline will not be taken into consideration. If you submit an application, it is your responsibility to ensure that it arrives before the deadline so please allow sufficient time for upload of publications and other documents.
The IT University invites all qualified researchers regardless of age, gender, religious affiliation or ethnic background to apply for the positions.