Resilient Computing and Cybersecurity

Paulo Esteves-Veríssimo is a professor in the Computer Science (CS) program at KAUST. Previously, he was a professor and FNR PEARL Chair at the University of Luxembourg's (Uni.lu) Faculty of Science, Technology and Medicine (FSTM). He also led the CritiX Research Lab at the SnT Centre at Uni.lu, which achieved world-class results and established enduring research capacity in resilient computing, cybersecurity, and dependability.

He has also been a professor and a board member of the University of Lisbon (ULisboa), Portugal. At ULisboa, he created the Navigators research group and was the founding director of Laboratório de Sistemas Informáticos de Grande Escala (LaSIGE). From its founding in 1998, the computer science and engineering lab LaSIGE has carried out research in leading-edge areas backed by key indicators of excellence.

He was UNILU-SnT’s representative at the European Cyber Security Organization (ESCO) and member of its Scientific & Technical Committee (STC). He served as Chair of the IFIP WG 10.4 on Dependable Computing and Fault-Tolerance and vice-chair of the Steering Committee of the IEEE/IFIP DSN conference. He is a Fellow of the IEEE, a Fellow of the ACM and an associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computing (TETC).

Professor Esteves-Veríssimo is interested in architectures, middleware and algorithms for resilient modular and distributed computing. In addition to examining paradigms and techniques that reconcile security and dependability, he also explores novel applications of these paradigms and techniques. By doing so, he achieves system resilience in areas such as autonomous vehicles, distributed control systems, digital health and genomics, and blockchain and cryptocurrency.

Dr. Esteves-Veríssimo’s research has featured in over 200 peer-reviewed international publications and five international books. He has delivered over 70 keynote speeches and distinguished lectures at reputable venues. As a systems and engineering specialist, he has contributed to designing and engineering several advanced industrial prototypes of distributed, fault-tolerant, secure or real-time systems developed through research and development.

Marc Dacier is a professor of Computer Science at KAUST. He is the principal investigator of the Security Research Bearing Experimental Results (SeRBER) Group. He previously served as a full professor and head of the Digital Security Department at EURECOM.

Dr. Dacier holds a Ph.D. in computer science (European Doctorate) from the Institut National Polytechnique de Toulouse, France, awarded in 1994. He has received numerous scientific awards and has served on over 120 security and dependability conference program committees.

Dacier has had a distinguished career in both academia and industry, working with several notable companies and institutions. His experience includes consulting for France Telecom and roles at IBM Research, Symantec Research Labs and the Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI).

At IBM, Dacier was the director of the IBM Global Security Analysis Laboratory, where his group produced the first market product for intrusion detection alert correlation. During his time at Symantec, his team developed an open platform called Worldwide Intelligent Network Environment (WINE) to share operational security data with researchers worldwide, promoting the reproducibility of security experiments. While at QCRI, he served as the founding director of the institute's cybersecurity research group.

He has served on over 120 program committees for major security and dependability conferences and has been a member of the editorial board of several top-tier peer-reviewed technical journals. In 1998, he founded the Research in Attacks, Intrusions and Defenses (RAID) conference (formerly known as Recent Advances in Intrusion Detection), which is ranked as a "Class A" conference by the Computing Research and Education Association of Australasia (CORE).

The internationally recognized expert in cybersecurity, who joined KAUST in 2021, focuses his research on intrusion detection, intrusion tolerance, network security, cybersecurity, threat intelligence and fraud detection.

At KAUST, Professor Dacier and his SeRBER group address network security issues related to the detection of middleboxes—devices that can serve a legitimate purpose in the connection between a client and a server but can also be misused by attackers to commit man-in-the-middle attacks. Another active area of research involves the security of online gaming (e-games, e-sports) and, more broadly, the metaverse. Additionally, they focus on the IoT ecosystem and operational technology (OT) networks, which are of particular interest to the oil and water industries.

Roberto Di Pietro (Fellow, IEEE; Distinguished Scientist, ACM; Fellow, AAIA; Member Academia Europaea) is a Professor of Computer Science with the KAUST CEMSE Division, Saudi Arabia. Previously, he was a Professor in Cybersecurity and founder of the Cyber-Security Research Innovation Lab (CRI-Lab) at Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU)-College of Science and Engineering (CES), Qatar.

Previously, at Bell Labs (Alcatel-Lucent/Nokia), he served as Global Head for Security Research, managing three security research departments based in Paris, Munich and Espoo, aligning research with business objectives and moving research results into innovation. Before, he was a tenured professor at the University of Padova. He started his career as a senior military officer within the Italian Ministry of Defence (MoD), working on security-related nationwide technology projects.

He has been working in the cybersecurity field for more than 25 years, leading technology-oriented and research-focused teams in the private sector, government and academia. He has served as a senior security consultant for international organizations, including the United Nations (U.N.) and U.N. agencies (the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the United Nations Global Service Centre (UNLB) and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)). In addition to his international experience, he was appointed Seconded National Expert and detached for one year at the European Union Agency for Criminal Justice Cooperation (Eurojust).

As per his drive for innovation, besides being involved in the mergers and acquisitions (M&A) of startups—and having founded one (exited)—he is on the board of research centres and startups.

In 2011-2012, he was awarded a Chair of Excellence from the University Carlos III, Madrid, Spain. In 2020, he received the Jean-Claude Laprie Award for having significantly influenced the theory and practice of Dependable Computing. In 2022, he was awarded the Individual Innovation Award from HBKU. He has been consistently included in Stanford University's "World Ranking Top 2% Scientists" list since this ranking existed.

His education accounts for an M.S. in Computer Science ('94) and an M.S. in Informatics ('03), both from the University of Pisa (UniPi), Italy, and a Specialization Diploma in Operations Research and Strategic Decisions ('03) and a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science ('04), both from the University of Rome "La Sapienza."

In his academic career, he has secured more than $9 million in funding (either as LPI or PI).

A cybersecurity expert, his main research interests include AI-driven cybersecurity, security and privacy for distributed systems (e.g., UAVs, Blockchain technology, Cloud, IoT, OSNs), applied cryptography, FinTech, Quantum Computing and data science. In particular, Di Pietro identifies three lines of research above all others: critical infrastructure protection (CIP), online social networks (OSN) and cloud security.

He has extensively contributed scientific articles to the cited topics, co-authored four books and registered many patents and applications.

Charalambos Konstantinou is an Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) and Affiliate Professor of Computer Science at KAUST. He is also the principal investigator of the Secure Next Generation Resilient Systems (SENTRY) Lab.

Professor Konstantinou received a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from New York University (NYU), U.S., and a Dipl. Ing. M.Eng. Degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), Greece. Before joining KAUST, he was an Assistant Professor with the Center for Advanced Power Systems (CAPS) at Florida State University, U.S.

His research interests include critical infrastructure security and resilience, with a special focus on smart grid technologies, renewable energy integration and real-time simulation.

He co-chairs the IEEE Task Force on Cyber-Physical Interdependence for Power System Operation and Control and previously chaired the IEEE Task Force on Resilient and Secure Large-Scale Energy Internet Systems. He is also an associate editor of the IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics.

Konstantinou is a senior member of the IEEE, a member of the ACM and an ACM Distinguished Speaker (2021-2024).

Professor Konstantinou's research focuses on critical infrastructure security and resilience, with a specialization in smart grid technologies, renewable energy integration and real-time simulations. His SENTRY Lab investigates the cybersecurity and resilience of industrial control systems, critical power grid infrastructure and embedded systems.

The lab employs a "red team/blue team" approach, where researchers act as attackers ("red team") to test the defenses developed and deployed by the "blue team," who respond to the simulated intrusions.

Using this concept, SENTRY researchers design adaptive modeling methods, monitoring schemes and control algorithms to detect, prevent and mitigate the risk of cyberattacks, especially in critical grid infrastructures.

The group's research aims to create secure and resilient computing systems by employing computer security fundamentals and cyber-physical engineering applications.