As part of the award, Professor Tsudik will make a series of visits to TU Darmstadt between March and December 2026 to conduct research in collaboration with computer science professor Ahmad-Reza Sadeghi. We spoke with Professor Tsudik about the questions that continue to drive his research and why securing satellites is a complex challenge.

If you had to describe your research to a lay person, what is it?

My research generally pertains to security and privacy. I am currently mainly interested in: (1) methods to secure the increasingly popular IoT ecosystem, (2) techniques that offer meaningful privacy to consumers, and (3) cost/benefit analyses -- and usability -- of both security and privacy mechanisms.

The Humboldt Research Award recognizes outstanding scientific achievements. What are the questions that still drive you today? What does receiving this award mean to you?

There are some research questions that I have been pondering, with no luck, over many years (that are unrelated to my Humboldt-related research), such as:

• How to make computers provably forget? We know how to prove knowledge, but not lack thereof.
• How to make digital signatures last a long time? On a related note, how to assure data confidentiality for a long time? We use cryptographic techniques for both signatures and encryption that are secure *today*. They will almost certainly become insecure some years from now. That would allow forgery and disclosure of information sensitivity of which might not diminish with time.

The award represents a huge honor; I am both humbled and impressed by its flexibility and generosity. It allows me to take a long view of research issues in security and privacy, without having to rush or “join the herd” to follow currently popular/trendy topics.

The award is also an invitation to collaborate. What makes this collaboration between TU Darmstadt and University of California, Irvine, particularly promising?

Though we have collaborated in the past, the current research topic of security for low-earth orbit (LEO) satellites is both novel and exciting. There hasn't been nearly enough prior research on this important topic.

Your host at TU Darmstadt is Ahmad-Reza Sadeghi. What made you want to work to together?

We know each other since early 2000-s. However, we first started collaborating around 2014, when a common friend connected us on a topic that was of mutual interest: software security for drone swarms. As it turned out, we (and other collaborators) had complementary expertise and the collaboration worked out very well. It was followed by several other nice results on related topics.

You work together on the security of the Internet of Things (IoT), embedded systems and satellite communications. Why are these systems especially challenging to secure?

Generally speaking, specialized computing devices (embedded, cyber-physical, and IoT) are harder to secure than general-purpose computing devices, such as smartphones, tablets, laptops, desktops, and servers. The latter have many rich features, including sophisticated/powerful hardware, operating systems (OS-s), as well as many diverse applications. Their hardware and OS-s incorporate many complex/advances security features which protect these devices against wide ranges of attacks.

In contrast, specialized devices are resource-limited, mostly due to various constraints (e.g., monetary cost, size, power consumption, and operational longevity) imposed by manufacturers. Thus, they lack advanced security features and can't naturally protect themselves from various exploits.

The questions were asked by Daniela Fleckenstein.