Professor Helen Treharne
Academic and research departments
School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering, Computer Science Research Centre.About
Biography
Experienced strategic leader as Head of School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering with overall responsibility for over 297 staff, over 1480 undergraduate and postgraduate taught and research students. The School is the largest in the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences at Surrey. Responsible for the strategic growth of the School in both teaching and research and oversight of research centres in nanotechnology, energy material, 5G/6G communication, cyber security, distributed and networking systems, AI and computer vision, speech and signal processing and space research. The School is ranked 7th in the country for its research outputs in computer science and informatics according to the latest UK Research Excellence Framework (REF 2021) and Surrey is ranked 15th in the UK for ‘*research power’ in engineering which includes electronic engineering.
An experienced research leader with an international reputation in formal methods and secure systems. Experienced at exploring research problems through different lenses and bridging between academia and industry. Skilled at leading interdisciplinary research teams that bring formal verification, hardware, cryptography, distributed systems, and human factors experts together. Currently involved in EPSRC projects on swarm attestation and protecting citizens' online.
Over 24 years of teaching experience in computer science at all levels with detailed understanding of curriculum design, technology-enhanced learning, quality assurance, assessment processes, professional body accreditation, curriculum reviews, restructuring and rationalisation of programmes and managing student experience (NSS). Skilled at supervising research in secure systems and more recently useable security and large language models for multi-modal hate speech.
University roles and responsibilities
- Head of School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering
- Director of the Academic Centre of Excellence in Cyber Security Education (ACE-CSE) recognised by NCSC
- Member of Faculty Executive Board
- Member of University Academic Leaders Forum
Previous roles
Responsibilities outside of the University
Current roles
- Director (Education) of Surrey Academic Centre of Excellence in Cyber Education (ACE-CSE, Surrey received gold award from NCSC).
- Associate Editor ACM Computing Surveys.
- Governor Royal Grammar School Guildford.
Previous roles
- MSc External Examiner Southampton Solent University, Aberystwyth University (Wales), York University, Royal Holloway University of London.
- Surrey University membership of the Rail Research UK Association (RRUKA).
ResearchResearch interests
My established research is on the formal analysis of safe and secure systems with emphasis on intelligent transport systems and rail applications. More recently I have moved into the area of useable security that has both a technical and interdisciplinary focus so that my future research contributions in secure systems provide real-world impact. My current research is related to examining the adoption of security technologies for a diverse and ageing society and robust passwordless authentication technologies.
- Currently a co-I on an EPSRC for Verifiably Correct Swarm Attestation in collaboration with ARM Ltd, Thales td, NTU and SRI International Inc. We have developed a framework for describing security properties for describing swarm attestation properties and categories more than 40 existing protocols and assessed which properties are exhibited by these protocols. The research also includes modelling and analysing protocols using the TAMARIN prover. This research is in collaboration with Jay Le-Papin, Sharar Ahmadi, Brijesh Dongol and Liqun Chen.
- Currently with colleagues across the UK on £2.79m UKRI EPSRC grant, AP4L, on protecting citizens online with significant external engagement. The team are looking at secure systems for support bubbles where the privacy of the participants in the bubbles are important and this is backed by the use of Distributed Ledger Technology for auditability. This research is collaboration with Nidhi Desai, Catalin Dragan, Steve Schneider, Ashley Fraser, Nishanth Sastry.
- I work collaboratively with colleagues to develop scalable solutions so that passwordless solutions which enable the creation of security credentials offer improved protection for the users. The challenges we are focusing are related to recovering credentials when devices are lost or when users transfer between devices. This research is in collaboration with Chris Culnane, Ioana Boureanu and Chris Newton.
- Recently led an NCSC project for the ACE CSE on Password Security and Phish Awareness for Older People working with 5 national charities.
- Work on useable security to support older people continues and keen to seek further discussions on this with charitable and external organisations. I am also very interested in security and privacy problems people with disabilities encounter in their daily lives. This research is in collaboration with Stella Kazamia, Chris Culnane, Dan Gardham.
Research interests
My established research is on the formal analysis of safe and secure systems with emphasis on intelligent transport systems and rail applications. More recently I have moved into the area of useable security that has both a technical and interdisciplinary focus so that my future research contributions in secure systems provide real-world impact. My current research is related to examining the adoption of security technologies for a diverse and ageing society and robust passwordless authentication technologies.
- Currently a co-I on an EPSRC for Verifiably Correct Swarm Attestation in collaboration with ARM Ltd, Thales td, NTU and SRI International Inc. We have developed a framework for describing security properties for describing swarm attestation properties and categories more than 40 existing protocols and assessed which properties are exhibited by these protocols. The research also includes modelling and analysing protocols using the TAMARIN prover. This research is in collaboration with Jay Le-Papin, Sharar Ahmadi, Brijesh Dongol and Liqun Chen.
- Currently with colleagues across the UK on £2.79m UKRI EPSRC grant, AP4L, on protecting citizens online with significant external engagement. The team are looking at secure systems for support bubbles where the privacy of the participants in the bubbles are important and this is backed by the use of Distributed Ledger Technology for auditability. This research is collaboration with Nidhi Desai, Catalin Dragan, Steve Schneider, Ashley Fraser, Nishanth Sastry.
- I work collaboratively with colleagues to develop scalable solutions so that passwordless solutions which enable the creation of security credentials offer improved protection for the users. The challenges we are focusing are related to recovering credentials when devices are lost or when users transfer between devices. This research is in collaboration with Chris Culnane, Ioana Boureanu and Chris Newton.
- Recently led an NCSC project for the ACE CSE on Password Security and Phish Awareness for Older People working with 5 national charities.
- Work on useable security to support older people continues and keen to seek further discussions on this with charitable and external organisations. I am also very interested in security and privacy problems people with disabilities encounter in their daily lives. This research is in collaboration with Stella Kazamia, Chris Culnane, Dan Gardham.
Teaching
I teach on our MSc in Cyber Security programme and on the Information Security for Business and Government module (COMM050).
I specialise in teaching risk management, threat modelling and also cover topics related to the emphasising that cyber security is the responsibility of everyone in an organisation. My ethos in teaching is to ensure that students are prepared for industry. It is important that we cover topics from a conceptual basis but that we also teach our students what are the current regulations and best practice out there in industry. The module on which I teach ensures that our students are prepared for industry. We have a number of guest speakers from industry on the course, from our own alumni that are working in the cyber industry, to industrial colleagues from standards organisations, such as PCS-DSS and those working in governance risk and compliance.
The module I teach has students from many disciplines including cyber security, data science and criminology. Each year I am excited by this mix of students because it means that we can discuss risk management from a realistic perspective as it is topic that spans a whole organisation and needs input from so many different stakeholders.
As well as teaching on a module, I enjoy supervising students for their projects/dissertations. I currently supervise Data Science students and PhD students that span natural language processing and useable security.
Seeing our students grow in confidence is wonderful and seeing them gain the skills that ensure what we teach is valuable out there in the real world is so inspiring as an educator.
Over my many years of teaching I have taught:
- First year Java an introduced practical examinations. I thoroughly enjoyed seeing our first years develop their confidence in programming.
- Software Engineering (COM1028) covering the software lifecycle, testing etc. with many guest lectures from industry discussing the lifecycles they adopt. Over my 20 years of teaching I have seen this change to now be concerned with continuous development and integration and agile methodologies.
- Data Structures and Algorithms (COM1029).
- Modelling and Simulation using CSP and JCSP (COM2007) which links back to my PhD background in process algebra.
All modules we teach at Surrey is supported using a VLE with an emphasis on practical work which provides a strong foundation for the transferable skills of our students.