Biography

I am currently a post-doc at COSIC/ESAT working on privacy in social networks, requirements engineering, privacy enhancing technologies and identity management systems. I am also part of the Privacy and Identity Management Group.

I completed my PhD titled "Multilateral Privacy Requirements Analysis in Online Social Networks" at the Arenberg School in the group HMDB of the Computer Science Department also at the Catholic University in Leuven . Bettina Berendt and Bart Preneel were my supervisors.

I currently participate in two EU projects "Trusted Architecture for Securely Shared Services" (TAS³) and "Global Identity Networking of Individuals" (GINI) where I do research on privacy and security requirements engineering. I am also involved in an upcoming four year interdisciplinary project called "Security and Privacy in Social Networks" (SPION) supported by the Agency for Innovation by Science and Technology (IWT) .

Prior projects and studies include:

• Research assistant, Hypermedia and Databases Research Group , Department of Computer Science, K.U. Leuven, Belgium (february 2008 - current)

• Research assistant, Department of Information Systems, Project InterVal .
  Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany (January, 2005 - December 2007)

• Research assistant, Dimeb (Digital media in education),
  University of Bremen, Bremen, Bermany (May, 2004 - January 2005)

• Diplom Informatik (Equivalent to M.A. in Computing),
  Humboldt University, Berlin, Bermany (Graduation: April, 2004)

• B.S. Mathematics, B.A. International Relations and Peace,
  University of Redlands, Redlands, CA, U.S.A. (Graduation: 1996)

Research Interests

My research is on developing ways to consolidate the privacy requirements of different stakeholders and the various notions of privacy or privacy solutions proposed by engineers when building systems. Specifically, I am interested in the application domain of social networks. In my work, I use theories from surveillance studies to understand how surveillance is affecting our notions of privacy and which concepts are useful in different contexts when building information systems. In TAS³and GINI I also do work on identity management systems and the implemenation of data protection in information systems. In the past, I have done work on security requirements, open source philosophies and applications, and elearning.