The future leaders in security and data privacy research coming out of the University of Waterloo are a hot commodity
By: Regina Ashna Singh
It is evident from the Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute’s (CPI) 7th Annual Conference that securing our digital future depends on the emerging and next waves of academic researchers in the field of cybersecurity and privacy. Seemingly, the work coming out of CPI and the University of Waterloo at large is significant and CPI set the stage for this work to be promoted and shared with the greater community. By bringing together industry professionals, faculty members, government employees, students, and peers, an inviting space where knowledge translation and the exchange of ideas occurred was created at Federation Hall (Waterloo campus) on October 28, 2025. This environment was mainly stimulated through multiple talks* and networking breaks, lunch and poster session, and panel and Q&A.
Poster Session
Congratulations to CPI’s 2025 Annual Conference poster prize winners: Ross Evans (PhD student) and Thomas Humphries (PhD candidate). CPI’s executive director, Dr. N. Asokan, says, “Their [Humpries and Evans] work is a testament to the cutting-edge, impactful research at the University of Waterloo by graduate students in the field of cybersecurity and privacy.” Both recipients are affiliated with Waterloo’s Cheriton School of Computer Science under the Faculty of Mathematics. As shared recipients, each awardee will receive $500.
Another highlight was the presence of Waterloo and CPI alum, Dr. Sajin Sasy from CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security, who flew in from Germany to participate in the event on his old stomping ground as both a speaker and poster judge. Professor Sasy won the CPI Graduate Excellent Scholarship in 2023 and has since then become a tenure-track faculty member at CISPA - a huge nod to the caliber of academics nurtured at the University of Waterloo.
From left to right: PhD candidate Thomas Humphries (poster prize recipient), Dr. Sajin Sasy from CISPA (poster judge), and PhD student Ross Evans (poster prize recipient). Both students are from the Cheriton School of Computer Science under the University of Waterloo's Faculty of Mathematics.
Panel and Q&A
CPI’s associate director, Dr. Diogo Barradas, organized and moderated a panel of early-career researchers (Seyed Majid Zahedi, Clemens Possnig, and Sirisha Rambhatla) from the University who shared their experiences navigating grant applications and balancing between risk-taking and securing funding. Alongside them, a CPI industry partner (Dr. Ilyas Iyoob, Chief Data Scientist, Global Head of Kyndryl Research) offered insight into how companies view academic collaborations, what makes proposals stand out, and where academic and industry priorities can align.
“Place your students in the right places,” says Dr. Iyoob. He further suggests [to faculty] to offer their students’ expertise to industry so the students receive exposure to real-world problems. Overall, he implies the key is to provide high-quality, low-cost (or volunteer) work to solve a company’s more immediate problem in the short term as it is beneficial to academic researchers in the long run. “Once a company knows that you understand their ecosystem, they will be easier to talk to; easier to work with...” says Dr. Iyoob.
He adds that another plus of embedding students at industry companies is that they will get access to the organization’s data firsthand, which can be particularly useful to researchers trying to pitch and/or submit grant proposals, for example.
On the academic side, Dr. Rambhatla says a “beautiful partnership takes time” and that there must be an alignment (e.g., in values, goals, vision etc.) between all parties involved in order to be successful.
Like Kyndryl, BTQ shares the vision of investing in talent as a CPI industry partner and is looking to continue the partnership into the future.
State of CPI
CPI was among eight recipients of Global Futures Network funding from the University of Waterloo. In the next three years, as per Professor Asokan, CPI endeavours to make itself financially stable through corporate alliances with a focus on the following tentative priorities: intensify industry collaborations, host high-impact events, and expand training activities, in collaboration with WatSPEED and Graduate Studies and Postdoctoral Affairs (GSPA).
To view more conference highlights and complete list of speakers and talks, visit CPI’s website.
* Keynote address: Dr. Anne Reinders, Head of Cryptography at BTQ
Talk #1: Building efficient and safe large language models - from low-dimensional training to safety benchmarking – Dr. Sirisha Rambhatla
Talk #2: Using formal methods to find network performance anomalies – Dr. Mina Tahmasbi Arashloo
Talk #3: Side-channel vulnerabilities in networking and AI systems – Dr. Sihang Liu
Talk #4: Navigating privacy and trust in the emerging era of human-robot interaction – Dr. Yue Hu
Talk #5: Challenges of RAM in privacy-preserving computations – Dr. Sajin Sasy (CISPA)