PhD Supervision
I supervise PhD students working on security protocols, formal verification, and code generation. Strong applicants come from computer science backgrounds with depth in at least one of: programming languages, compiler construction, formal methods, or mathematical logic, and they can write working code.
If that describes you, this page lists the research topics my group works on and the funding routes available. Self-funded enquiries are welcome. To discuss a possible project, email me directly at .
General information about postgraduate research at Teesside University (Middlesbrough, UK).- Research topics:
- Automatic Generation of Security Protocols Implementations, Code Generation, Model Driven Development
- Applied Formal Methods for Security: Formal Verification of Protocols and Applications, Verification Tools
- Security protocols, services and applications
- Software Security: Java, Android, APIs, Programming Abstractions for Security
- Language Based Security
- Security Analysis and Evaluation
- Applied Cryptography
- Security of Blockchain Technology and Cryptocurrencies
- Next-generation Ethical Hacking Tools
- Current (co*-)supervision:
- Lewis Golightly: Distributed systems security
- Marco Moscini: IoT and Blockchain security
- Neethu Shanmugan: Reverse engineering of security protocols
- Joshua Dowrick: Android Anti-Forensics
- Past (co*-)supervision:
- Dr Rémi Garcia: Integrating Formal Methods to Bridge Abstract and Concrete Representations of Security Protocols (2026)
- *Dr Olutunde Adesiji: Blockchain-Based RSUs Data Securing Framework (2024)
- PhD Funding opportunities:
- Doctoral Loan: available to UK and EU citizens (settled status required from academic year 2021-22; for pre-settled status holders specific conditions apply)
- European Union: Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
- European Union: Erasmus+ (Regrettably no longer available as the UK government decided to leave the scheme)
- Grants for International students from Commonwealth countries
- Chevening Scholarship UK government’s international awards scheme
- British Council and Bilateral agreements UK-your home country
- Women Techmakers (various fields including Computer Science)
- For Italian citizens (Law 476/1984 art. 2 and Law nr. 240/2010 art. 19)
- For Chinese, Russian and Danish citizens
- More opportunities (findaPhd.com)