Research

Scientific Excellence

Information technology has become a substantial part of our everyday life. This rapid progress opens up many opportunities, but also holds dangers. They range from Internet fraud to large-scale attacks on business and governments, in which cybercriminals spy on, sabotage and steal sensitive data. Creating long-term security against criminal attackers - that is the goal of the HGI, one of the Research Departments of the Ruhr-Universität Bochum.

At the HGI, more than 160 scientists and their research groups from the fields of computer science, electrical engineering and information technology and mathematics as well as the humanities and social sciences conduct research. In this unique interdisciplinary environment, almost all aspects of IT security are covered.

As one of the most renowned and largest institutions for basic research in IT security, the HGI offers outstanding opportunities for young scientists to start their career within a structured doctoral program. It is home to the NRW research colleges NERD and SecHuman as well as the Cluster of Excellence CASA.

In the Graduate Schools of the HGI and the Cluster of Excellence, doctoral students can benefit from numerous seminars, training courses and other activities that can deepen their academic and personal development.

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Cluster of Excellence CASA - Cyber Security in the Age of Large-Scale Adversaries

The most significant cyberattacks of our time are always conducted by powerful, large-scale enemies. In the Cluster of Excellence CASA, top-class scientists are researching effective and sustainable measures against these attacks. They pursue an interdisciplinary approach in which not only technical issues but also psychological factors of IT security are analyzed.

This constellation is unique in Europe. The cluster was launched in 2019 and is funded by the DFG with approximately 30 million euros for an initial period of 7 years.

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0 Professors

0 PhDs and Postdocs

0 Publications from the most prominent conferences

0 Best Paper Awards at top conferences since 2019

0 ERC Grants

Publications and Awards

More than 200 publications at the most important IT security and cryptography conferences and 16 Best Paper Awards in recent years make the HGI one of the world's most successful research institutions and the European leader in the field.

This excellence is also reflected in a large number of renowned scientific awards and funding programs with which our research has been recognized. For example, the HGI has now acquired nine grants from the European Research Council (ERC Grants).

Some of our most significant honours include:

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize: 2024
Sofja Kovalevskaja Award: 2010
IACR Fellowship: 2016

ERC Advanced Grant: 2016, 2021, 2022
ERC Consolidator Grant: 2013, 2021
ERC Starting Grant: 2016, 2018, 2022, 2023, 2024

DFG Heisenberg Professorship: 2015
DFG Heinz Maier Leibnitz Prize: 2011, 2023
DFG Emmy Noether Program: 2010, 2015. 2023

Interdisciplinarity

The challenges we currently face in IT security are multifaceted, which is why they must be met with an approach that is accordingly comprehensive and integrative. To that end, the HGI brings together a broad and diverse group of researchers from a variety of disciplines. Currently, 26 professors lead research groups with members representing electrical engineering and information technology, mathematics as well as the humanities and social sciences. They conduct investigations into nearly all aspects related to IT security, from basic research in cryptography and Internet and hardware security to user behaviour and legal frameworks.

To support interdisciplinary collaboration sustainably, we organize regularly scheduled events and meetings such as the lecture series "IT Security for the Humanities and Social Sciences" and "Principles and Research Methods in the Humanities and Social Sciences for IT Security". The institute's graduate schools also fully embrace an interdisciplinary approach. Furthermore, the interdisciplinary Identity Protection on the Internet research group (a-i3, Identitätsschutz im Internet e.V.), which was established at the Ruhr-University Bochum in 2005, organizes an extremely well regarded annual symposium in conjunction with the Federal Office for Information Security.
www.a-i3.org

The HGI played a leading role in the conception of the Center for Advanced Internet Studies (CAIS). The CAIS was founded in 2017 in Bochum to engage in interdisciplinary research on social, economic, legal, political and technological aspects related to digitalization. To this end, the Center organizes events and working groups and invites experts from academia and industry to spend up to six months as fellows at the institute, where they can carry out work on their projects related to internet research.
www.cais.nrw

SecHuman (Brave New World: Security for Humans in Cyberspace) is a doctoral program at the HGI in cooperation with the TU Dortmund and the FH Dortmund, which investigates questions of IT security with social relevance.
www.sechuman.rub.de

Whitepaper

With our whitepapers, we aim to present complex IT security topics in a short and concise manner and provide readers with quick access to the subject matter.

Our current whitepaper White Hat Hacking in Research (only available in German) describes the key implications of Paragraph 202a and Paragraph 202c of the German Criminal Code (StGB) for IT security research in Germany and shows why, in our view, a modification of these legal norms not only makes sense, but seems urgently necessary.

Further whitepapers: With certainty 5G (only available in German)

Publisher of Well-Known Journals

Ruhr University Bochum has established itself as a publisher of significant journals in the field of IT security, providing an outstanding platform for groundbreaking research. These journals include

the IACR Transactions on Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems (TCHES) and
the IACR Transactions on Symmetric Cryptology (ToSC).

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