Cybersecurity, Privacy and Freedom Protection in the Connected World

Hamid Jahankhani's principal research area for a number of years has been in the field of cybersecurity, information security and digital forensics. In partnership with the key industrial sectors, he has examined and established several innovative research projects that are of direct relevance to the needs of UK and European information security, digital forensics industries, Critical National Infrastructure and law enforcement agencies. Hamid has planned, proposed and managed several collaborative projects, and secured a substantial research income of up to £6m.

Professor Jahankhani is Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Electronic Security and Digital Forensics, International Journal of Electronic democracy, both published by Inderscience, and General Chair of the annual International Conference on Global Security, Safety and Sustainability (ICGS3). Hamid has edited and contributed to over 20 books and has over 150 conference and journal publications together with various BBC radio interviews. Hamid has supervised to completion of 13 Ph.D. and professional doctorate degree students and overseen 67 Ph.D. students progressing. In summer 2017, Hamid was trained as the GCHQ "cyberist" to train the next generation of cybersecurity experts through GCHQ CyberFirst initiative. Recently, Hamid trained over 100 frontline police officers in three of the largest London Boroughs.

Dr. Arshad Jamal is Dean of Northumbria University London Campus. He has substantial experience in academic leadership, strategic planning, people development, programme development, teaching and research. He has held key positions of Associate Dean and Programme Director at London campus since 2014. Prior to that Arshad held positions of Programme Director MBA and Course Director Computing Systems Programmes at London campuses of Roehampton and Ulster Universities. He has also held Post Graduate Research supervisor positions in UK's top ranking Universities including University of Warwick and Cranfield University. Arshad has also held doctoral researcher position at Brunel University.

Shaun Lawson is Professor of Social Computing and Head of the Department of Computer & Information Sciences at Northumbria University. He leads the Northumbria Social Computing (NorSC) research group. Prior to joining Northumbria in November 2015, he founded and led, for 10 years, the Lincoln Social Computing (LiSC) Research Centre at the University of Lincoln. His research lies at the boundaries between computing, design and the social sciences, and explores the use and significance of social media, and other collaborative and participatory digital services, in people's lives. This includes a focus on the design, implementation and evaluation of new social platforms, applications and services as well as analysis of text, speech and image data. He was appointed the UK's first Professor in Social Computing in 2011. He has conducted applied and cross-disciplinary work in areas including mental health and wellbeing, politics, activism, animal behaviour and sustainability. He has held, as PI, grants totalling over £2.5 million from funders such as EPSRC, ESRC, the EU, Microsoft Research, as well as industry, and is the co-author of over 150 peer-reviewed publications, including 12 full CHI papers in the last three years. He is Founding Chair of the UK's SIGCHI chapter, a full member of both EPSRC and ESRC Peer Review Colleges and Visiting Professor in Computer Science at UCL.