New ATHENE Professorship for Cybersecurity
With the appointment of Adi Akavia, TU Darmstadt and ATHENE are strengthening Darmstadt’s cybersecurity research center
2026/01/30
Professor Adi Akavia is an internationally recognized expert in applied cybersecurity and took up an ATHENE professorship at the Department of Computer Science at TU Darmstadt and the position as head of department at the Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology SIT at the beginning of the year. The dual role combines cutting-edge academic research with practical application in a key area of cybersecurity.
Professor Adi Akavia is one of the leading experts in applied cybersecurity research. She combines two currently particularly important areas of computer science: cybersecurity and artificial intelligence. How can machine learning, the basis of modern AI, be secured in such a way that confidentiality, data protection, and data sovereignty are maintained? With her research, Adi Akavia builds bridges between the theoretical foundations of cryptography and the practical application of AI. Her research has been applied in fields such as medicine and bioinformatics.
Adi Akavia has an excellent international network: after studying in Israel, in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, she earned her doctorate at the renowned MIT in Boston under Professor Shafi Goldwasser, one of the pioneers of modern cryptography. This was followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at Princeton with Professor Avi Wigderson, also a pioneer of modern cryptography and, like Shafi Goldwasser, a recipient of the Turing Award. After further research fellowships at Rutgers University and the Weizmann Institute of Science, she became a professor at the University of Haifa in 2018 and head of the biometrics research group at the Haifa Center for Cyber Law & Policy.
“I am very much looking forward to working with my new colleagues”, said Adi Akavia. “ATHENE and TU Darmstadt offer a unique environment for combining cutting-edge academic research with real impact in industry and society. There are few places in the world that can compete with Darmstadt in this regard.”
“I am delighted that we have recruited Professor Akavia, an internationally renowned expert in her field, to TU Darmstadt and thereby further strengthened the close ties between the university and ATHENE,” explained TU President Professor Tanja Brühl. “With her innovative and forward-looking research, Adi Akavia will bolster our renowned field of information and intelligence research in the long term. At the same time, she will provide important impetus for interdisciplinary cooperation projects and practical applications by fruitfully combining artificial intelligence with cybersecurity issues.”
About ATHENE
ATHENE is Germany’s National Research Center for Applied Cybersecurity. Established in 2019 by the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space (BMFTR) and the Hessian Ministry of Science and Research, Arts and Culture (HMWK), ATHENE is a research center of the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft with its institutes SIT and IGD and with participation of Technical University of Darmstadt, Goethe University Frankfurt and Darmstadt University of Applied Sciences. Today, ATHENE is Europe’s largest and leading research center for cybersecurity, conducting mission-driven, cutting-edge research that delivers measurable impact for government, industry and society.
With Professor Adi Akavia, we are gaining an outstanding scientist who will help ATHENE further expand its leading role in German cybersecurity research and, in particular, strengthen its expertise at the intersection of cybersecurity and artificial intelligence,” says Professor Michael Waidner, ATHENE CEO and head of Fraunhofer SIT. “The fact that we have been able to recruit such a renowned scientist underscores the international appeal of the location and the considerable attractiveness that Hesse and Germany enjoy abroad in our field of research.” ATHENE/mho
Questions for Professor Adi Akavia on starting at TU Darmstadt
Why students should be interested in your scientific subject? What makes it exciting?
My research lies at the intersection of cryptography, security, and learning from data, addressing foundational and applied challenges in the secure utilization of modern digital systems. For example, privacy-preserving machine learning enables powerful analytics without exposing sensitive information, addressing a pressing societal challenge: how to harness data while protecting privacy. Exploring how cryptographic tools like fully homomorphic encryption work in practice, or how AI systems can be made resilient against misuse, offers students a chance to contribute to cutting-edge solutions that matter in industry and society.
At the TU Darmstadt the need for interdisciplinarity is accentuated. Which cutting points / interfaces to other faculties exist in your area of research?
Privacy-preserving machine learning and secure analytics connect with data science, bioinformatics, healthcare, and other domains where protecting sensitive information is essential. Cryptographic foundations are deeply mathematical, while practical system security and enterprise cybersecurity intersect with software engineering and systems research. There are also deep connections with law and ethics in terms of privacy and data protection, as well as with AI security – a field that combines security, machine learning, and human-centric assurance. These interfaces make the research area rich for cross-faculty collaboration and student engagement.
If I would be a student today, I would…
… focus on building a strong foundation in the fundamentals – mathematics, algorithms, cryptography, and machine learning – while actively testing these ideas in practice. I would seek out projects and internships that expose gaps between what is theoretically known and what may be still missing for real systems. At the same time, I would stay curious beyond my own discipline, learning about privacy regulation, ethical AI, and the societal impact of security technologies. In a world increasingly shaped by data and AI, the most impactful engineers and researchers will be those who can combine technical depth with an understanding of how technologies are actually deployed and governed.
The perfect balance to a stressful working day is …
…being fully absorbed in a research problem, in a state of deep focus, is crucial for tackling hard questions. Allowing oneself to be imbalanced, totally immersed, is not a bad thing. Nonetheless, some of the best ideas emerge precisely when the mind is given space, during a walk or relaxation. The balance between intense engagement and the calming of the mind is essential, not only for well-being, but also for creativity and long-term scientific thinking.
