How would you describe your work in 90 seconds?

I’m working at the intersection of Machine Learning (ML) and security; on the one hand, my work is about how can we use ML or AI in general to improve the security of systems or devices, for instance, mobile devices. On the other hand, it’s about the security of ML algorithm models themselves, how they can be protected, how people can attack them, and what we can do about this. One of my focuses is on learning-based detection systems for malware detection, so how can we use ML to improve the detection performance of malware detection systems? Since we are coping with attackers, we also need to think about how an attacker could modify malware to circumvent detection systems, what we can do then about it, and how we can make these systems more robust.

How did you get in touch with informatics?

It was a long journey, I would say, but it started back when I was a child. I was into computer games, and at some point, I had a video game that required me to extend the memory and the hard drive of the computer. That’s when I got interested in the technical aspects of computer science, and I also took a programming course in Pascal (ed. note: a programming language). And then, during school, I already knew that I would like to do something with computer science; I chose informatics as an elective, and I also studied it.

Where do you see the connection between your work and everyday life?

We have all these mobile devices nowadays, like smartphones or smartwatches, that people are using for a lot of purposes, and those devices have a lot of sensitive data on them. One of my research focuses is on protecting this data, for instance, by identifying malware using AI-based methods. Furthermore, as AI becomes a ubiquitous part of our daily lives, bringing exciting advancements, it also raises security and privacy concerns - making research essential to ensure these technologies are both secure and privacy-friendly. Then there’s also the user side: If you think about data protection, we should also raise awareness about the data that goes into all these AI-based services. I think there are a lot of connections between my research and everyday life, fortunately.

What makes you happy in your work?

One thing that makes me happy is that I can do a lot of different things in my job; usually, when people talk about informatics, there’s the cliché that you’re working in a basement somewhere without any connection to people. That’s definitely not the case with my research, because I have to connect with other people all the time, also internationally. I have a lot of collaborations with researchers in Europe in particular. I think that’s an aspect of my work that’s especially important now, at a time when countries are getting more introversive, more closed-up, and there’s the feeling that everybody wants to disconnect from everybody else. In the research community, we still collaborate, and it feels more like a European research endeavor. Another great aspect of my work is teaching young, motivated students and helping them to get their degrees, succeed, and share experiences. I really enjoy helping them to develop and share their work, and pass on some of the things that I’ve learned in the past decade.

Why do you think there are still so few women in computer science?

I think this question is phrased too negatively because when I started studying informatics, there were much fewer women in IT. If I remember correctly, we were 150 students, and out of those, there were maybe 3 women. There’s still a lot to do, but compared to before, there are 10 times more women in informatics, so I think there has been a positive development. As for the reasons, I think it’s difficult to get the whole picture, but in my view, one important aspect has to do with role models. There is this stereotype of women or girls not caring about computers too much, that it is a thing meant for boys. At TU Wien, there’s definitely a push to establish more female professors who then become role models; to show that women can do this and that it’s an interesting domain for women to work in. Of course, girls can also get fascinated by this topic, and hopefully this fascination will continue to grow. We also need to get in touch with girls early on to show them at school what computer science is and why it is exciting. That’s the right direction, but we also need to be patient. There’s still some work to do, but looking at the developments over the last years, I’m actually quite impressed and excited that it has turned out that informatics is not a domain where there are only men, and I think there are other fields where the ratio is a lot worse than it is in computer science.

Daniel Arp is Assistant Professor at the Research Unit Security and Privacy at TU Wien Informatics. His current project, BREADS, aims at building robust and explainable AI-based defenses for computer security. The project is funded by a WWTF VRC grant und will continue until 2030.

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