Please use the official CISPA application portal to hand in your application (Link).

PhD in Human-Centred and Organizational Security (Fully Funded For 4+ Years)

Our Research

At CHESS Lab, our research is within the fields of Human-Centred Security, Organizational Cybersecurity, and Industrial Control System Security. In our team, we address cybersecurity challenges that organizations and humans face. We want to understand how theoretical and academic cybersecurity ideas are implemented in organizations’ practice. We are also interested in understanding the economic incentives behind security decisions and general principles of Human-Centred Security and Usable Security.

We go into organizations, engage with decision-makers and users, and test interventions to improve organizations’ cyberresilience. In our studies, we combine methods like interviews, diary studies, questionnaires, field observations, qualitative coding, web crawling, data analysis with LLM, statistical tests, and prototype coding. In summary, our work is highly interdisciplinary.

What We Offer

• You will work as a researcher at the world’s no. 1 cybersecurity research institute, together with hundreds of other researchers from around the world. We strive for excellence. Our PhD graduates regularly transition to leadership roles at top universities, or leading technology companies around the world.
• A fully-funded PhD position, with a gross salary starting at approx. 58,000€/year, following the federal TVöD 13 statute, with regular increase.
• The initial contract will be for four years, with the possibility for extension up to six years. Note: The first year might be designed as a special preparation phase.
• You will be an enrolled PhD student at one of CISPAs partner universities.
• 30 days of paid vacation, health insurance coverage, and a pension scheme (VBL).
• Retreats, team events, extensive onboarding, special trainings for presentation, writing, method, and leadership skills and regular CISPA-wide social events create a welcoming working experience.

Your PhD Journey

• You will be a researcher! Most of your time, you will develop, test, execute, and present research projects. We will create the projects together, based on your interests and strengths.
• You will gather your first leadership experience in co-supervising Bachelor’s and Master’s students in their thesis projects and student assistants (HiWis) in their projects.
• As we are a rather young lab, your knowledge and opinion will shape how and what we will work on.
• We publish our results at international conferences. During your PhD, you will have the opportunity to travel to multiple conferences around the globe. Meeting other young, international researchers may be the most exciting experience during your PhD journey.
• At CISPA, we are all equal: there is no artificial hierarchy between students and faculty, and we use a first-name basis.

What We Expect

• Great enthusiasm for our research topics. Furthermore, self-organizing and planning your days and weeks is crucial for success in a PhD.
• You need to have the ability to develop solutions for complex problems proactively.
• We do human factor research, hence you need to be willing and able to work with humans, e.g., interview participants, take a user’s perspective, or observe participants in the field.
• You need to know the basics of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) or cybersecurity through your previous studies.

Formal Criteria

• You must have a Master’s degree from a top-tier, research-oriented university in computer science, cybersecurity, electrical engineering, or a related field.
• If you only have a Bachelor’s so far, please check out CISPA’s excellence program or the graduate school at Saarland University.
• You need to be proficient in written and spoken English. German is not a requirement to work at CISPA.

MISC

• Saarland is beautiful, living costs are moderate, and Paris is less than 2 hours away by train. 😉
• Information for international applicants: The freedom of research and teaching is written deep into the German constitution. We live in a time when researchers in other countries are under immense pressure from their governments. However, no one is interfering with our research in Germany and at CISPA. Our team can pursue exactly the type of research we like, which regularly leads to constructive critiques of managers, policy makers, and security vendors, but without the danger of retaliation. 🦾

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