Jaap-Henk Hoepman: Biography
These are exciting, yet at the same time worrying, times. ICT is increasingly used to empower and connect people. We have embraced social networking and are using mobile devices at a spectacular rate. This gradual confluence of the virtual and the real world into one Internet of People and Things is changing the world before our very eyes. Are we in control? Can we trust this emerging new infrastructure?
I believe that these are important questions that do not have just a technological answer. They need to be tackled from different perspectives. Even though their means and methods differ widely, engineers, legal scholars, social scientists and even artists all investigate and try to understand the world around them. Their creations, whether they are new technologies, scientific papers, or works of art, present us views on a possible future. I think we can learn from each others approaches and results, and that we should join forces to shape our future in this new world. We should not stand on the sideline and simply watch the future unfold.
I believe that our increasing dependence on information technology requires us to do all that is necessary to ensure that the user remains in control. This means the technology should be open, transparent, reliable, trustable, secure and aligned with our digital liberties. Self-organisation is key. Adaptability, by humans as well as the systems themselves, is important.
My competences
I like to solve complex problems, and to explain their (technical) solution in layman's terms to a general audience. I also like to stimulate debate on how current developments in ICT impact our society, especially in the areas of security, privacy and digital liberty. I am not afraid to take an unorthodox or extreme position in such debates. It helps me to uncover the essence, the hearth of the matter at hand. Most importantly, I love to be standing at this personal crossroads of theoretical computer science, ICT, law, and creativity in art, music and design, and to be able to combine the best of all these worlds.
My research
My research is inspired by practical problems. I focus on the design of a secure and privacy friendly protocols for identity management and the Internet of Things. Apart from that I study privacy by design. I speak on these topics at national and international conferences and publish my results both in (inter)national scientific journals as well as in the popular press. Occasionally I appear in the media as a security expert.
My CV
Currently, I am guest professor at the PRISEC - Privacy And Security group of Karlstad University, Sweden.
I am slo an associate professor of privacy enhancing technologies and identity management at the Radboud University Nijmegen, working for the iHub, the interdisciplinary research hub on Digitalization and Society. Moreover, I am principal scientist (and a former scientific director and co-founder) of the Privacy & Identity Lab, and member of The Internet of People.
I studied computer science at the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, the Netherlands, and obtained my PhD at the University of Amsterdam based on work done at the Centre for Mathematics and Computer Science (CWI). For several years I worked for the security group of KPN Research, the research division of one of the main Dutch telcos. I then returned to academia as an assistant professor at the Faculty of Computer Science of the University of Twente. From 2006 to 2013 I worked in the Security Group of TNO in Groningen. and from 2008 to 2024 I was an associate professor in the IT Law section of the Faculty of Law of the University of Groningen.
I am a member of The Internet of People and Council, a thinktank on the Internet of Things.
Beyond that I used to be a columnist for the Financieele Dagblad (FD, a major Dutch newspaper) and a regular guest on the Dutch national radio news show Nieuws en Co. I am a former member of the Executive Board of Trust in Digital Life, former chair of the IFIP working group 11.2 on "Pervasive System Security", former coordinator and co-founder of the Kerckhoffs Institute offering a master programme in Computer Security, and co-founder of SAFE-NL.
In October 2021 my book Privacy Is Hard and Seven Other Myths. Achieving Privacy through Careful Design appeared at MIT Press.
In my free time I enjoy making my own music, designing visuals, and practice Okinawan Goju Ryu karate-do.
Last Version - Wed Nov 3 00:01:19 2021 +0100 / e1e3326.
(Note: changeover from CVS to dotless svn version numbers on Jan 19, 2008, and changeover to GIT versioning on May 30, 2013.)
Maintained by Jaap-Henk Hoepman
Email: jhh@cs.ru.nl