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General PhD Call

Saarbrücken, Germany

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CISPA is growing, and our new faculty members are looking for YOU to work together on new ideas and drive innovation forward!

With this General PhD Call, we would like to give you the opportunity to get to know our new faculty members and their work and to apply for a PhD position by January 15, 2026 (AoE).


Simon Gregersen

R4: Reliable Security Guarantees

My research focuses on programming languages and program verification. The goal of my research is to develop software systems with guarantees about correctness and security. To achieve this, I design and apply new mathematically founded techniques to formally prove properties of programs. I am particularly interested in distributed and randomized systems as well as techniques such as program logics, separation logic, logical relations, type systems, semantics, and interactive theorem provers like Rocq and Lean.  

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Adam Kortylewski

R2: Trustworthy Information Processing

Our research aims to enable artificial intelligence to achieve a causal generative understanding of our world. We believe that this deficiency is the root cause of foundational open problems in AI, such as the need for large-scale human supervision, the lack of interpretability and the lack of safety and security. Therefore, we integrate aspects from Machine Learning, Visual Computing, and Computer Security to develop generative AI systems that learn self-supervised while being a safe, secure, and human understandable component of our everyday lives.

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Michael Pradel

R4: Reliable Security Guarantees

Our research aims to develop tools and techniques for reliable, efficient, and secure software systems. To this end, we work on testing and analyzing complex software systems, e.g., using AI-assisted program analysis and automated testing.

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Giray Yağlıkçı

R4: Reliable Security Guarantees

Our research aims to enable robust (i.e., secure, safe, and reliable) and sustainable (i.e., low-cost, high-endurance, and energy-efficient) scaling of computing systems. We focus on the robustness and sustainability challenges in research fields of computer architecture, systems, security, and sustainability. Our future research directions include (but are not limited to) security-oriented hardware-software co-design, data-centric security, and testing.

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Andrew Lowry

R2- Trustworthy Information Processing

Our research aims to develop algorithms for training trustworthy machine learning systems---ones that preserve the privacy of individuals' data, are robust to adversarial attacks, and treat different groups fairly. We seek to bridge theory and practice by analyzing the fundamental limits of performance in trustworthy ML and designing scalable algorithms that approach these limits in large-scale, real-world settings

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These are our new faculty, who would love to work with you!

Learn more about each faculty by clicking on the link to their individual website.


Thorsten Eisenhofer

 R4 - Threat Detection & Defences

Our research focus is on machine learning and computer security. We are interested in all kinds of attacks on learning models and develop defenses to improve their robustness. To do this, we often look beyond the model itself and examine the entire computational pipeline, including pre-processing, post-processing, and the underlying hardware and software stack. At the same time, we are also interested in how learning-based approaches, including modern LLM and agent systems, can support core security tasks such as vulnerability analysis, fuzzing, and malware classification.

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Ana-Maria Cretu

 R2: Trustworthy Information Processing

Our research aims to design safer and more private data-driven systems, with a focus on generative AI, synthetic data, and anonymization mechanisms. As society rapidly adopts data-driven systems powered by personal data, there is often a mismatch between claims made about these systems and their actual capabilities. We rigorously model these claims and evaluate them in real-world systems. We also develop new tools to evaluate privacy and security of these systems using automated attacks. Our research combines concepts from computer security, machine learning, and applied mathematics

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Ruijie Meng

R4: Reliable Security Guarantees

My research focuses on software security. I develop techniques to automatically validate distributed, concurrent, and stateful software systems. More recently, I am interested in exploring frontier AI to solve security challenges, as well as in enhancing the security and reliability of AI-powered software systems.

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Moritz Schlögel

 R4 - Threat Detection & Defences

Our research focuses on software security and automating program analyses. We develop automated techniques to find bugs in software, for example, via fuzzing, but we also study automated exploit generation and how to mitigate or patch found vulnerabilities. Our goal is to scale program analysis to complex, real-world software. We also care about how we as scientists conduct and evaluate security research.

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Jane Im

 R6: Empirical & Behavioral Security

Our research in Human-Computer Interactions aims to develop digital systems that give users more agency over their online interpersonal interactions and data. Specifically, we focus on: 1) Developing social media systems that respect the consent of users, especially those who tend to have less power—to curate empowering interpersonal interactions that are needed to create social change, 2) Designing mechanisms that give users and creators more agency over their data or creative work, as AI technologies are designed in a way to threaten it

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What We Offer:

  • Competitive full time-gross base salary for E13 according to the scale of the TVöD (German Federal Employment Agreement) 
  • Comprehensive benefits package that includes health insurance coverage, 30 days of paid vacation and a robust pension scheme.
  • Possibilities for personal and professional growth, encompassing language classes, research support, as well as extracurricular and social activities
  • Our onboarding team will provide you with all the necessary support for a seamless and successful start to your journey with us
  • We maintain a trustworthy, inclusive, and safe space and are looking for curious and creative new colleagues willing to learn & grow in an enjoyable and friendly team atmosphere.

What We Expect:

  • You have a Master’s degree from a research-oriented institution of higher education in a subject relevant to our research. 
  • You have completed some coursework on topics related to the faculty's research area during their studies and bring a solid base knowledge around the it.
  • Excellent English, but no German? CISPA is an international research institute. Knowing German is really not necessary, although daily life is a bit smoother if you speak a few words and if you want to learn German, we offer free courses.

Working at CISPA:

  • We promote a flat hierarchy that encourages working together as a cohesive team and contributing one’s perspectives and ideas.
  • We offer an excellent research environment with close individual supervision, worldwide collaborations, and with significant funding for travel and equipment.
  • Our locations are in Saarbrücken and St. Ingbert, in the Saarland region with international flair (e.g., an International School and distinguished cuisine influenced by the proximity to the French border). Saarland is also known for its green spaces, parks and proximity to nature, providing opportunities for relaxation and outdoor activities.
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