Katrin Heinrich
Contact
office-cheng@hpi.de
+49 (0)331 5509-222
O1-E.04 · HPI Campus II
IT Security Engineering
Researchers and students working on security analytics, secure identities, cyber defence and security education.
HEAD
Dr. rer. nat. Feng Cheng
Senior Researcher · Head of IT Security EngineeringChair Representative
+49 (0)331 5509-519
O1-E.07 · HPI Campus II
Heads the IT Security Engineering team and represents the Chair of Internet Technologies and Systems.
Focus
AI security, Data-driven security engineering, Security analytics, Network and multi-cloud security, Advanced cyber attack and defence
ASSISTANT
CURRENT MEMBERS
Dr.-Ing. Pejman Najafi
Postdoc researcherFocus
Cybersecurity, Big-data architectures and analytics for cybersecurity, Graph analytics for cybersecurity
Contact
O1-E.06 · HPI Campus II
Mehryar Majd, M.Sc.
PhD researcher · Research assistantFocus
Web-log anomaly detection in data center operations, Cloud workload prediction, VM Characterization
Contact
O1.E-04 · HPI Campus II
Farzad Motlagh, M.Sc.
PhD researcher · Research assistantFocus
AI Security, LLM Security, Prompt Injection
Contact
O1.E-06 · HPI Campus II
Dominic Schaa, M.Sc.
PhD researcher · Research assistant · Sec-Eng Lab AdminFocus
Security Architecture, Agentic SOC, Advanced Analytics
Contact
O1.E-06 · HPI Campus II
Focus
Resource-Level and Identity-Level Authentication for Confidential Access to Online Data
Contact
O1.E-04 · HPI Campus II
Laurenz Gilbert, B.Sc.
Student assistantFocus
Threat Intelligence, AI Assisted Vulnerability Management, AI Incidents Analysis
Contact
O1.E-06 · HPI Campus II
Fenris Heidemann, B.Sc.
Master thesisOngoing thesis: Composed Adversarial Strategies Against Frontier Large Reasoning Models.
Focus
Adversarial strategies, Large reasoning models
Contact
O1.E-06 · HPI Campus II
Julian Fuchs, B.Sc.
Master thesisOngoing thesis: AI-Native Threat Intelligence Management and Serving.
Focus
Threat intelligence, AI-native systems
Contact
O1.E-04 · HPI Campus II
Kurt Leissering, B.Sc.
Master thesisOngoing thesis: AI Guardrails for Enterprise Network.
Focus
AI guardrails, Enterprise network security
Contact
O1.E-04 · HPI Campus II
Other PhD students
Hong Guo, M.Sc.
PhD researcher · Ongoing · MMLFocus
Efficient Low-Bit CUTLASS GEMM Optimization, Base Model Reasoning Sharpening
Contact
O1.E-04 · HPI Campus II
Jona Otholt, M.Sc.
PhD researcher · Ongoing · MMLFocus
Generalized Category Discovery,
Contact
O1.E-04 · HPI Campus II
Weixing Wang, M.Sc.
PhD researcher · Ongoing · MMLFocus
Unified Multimodal Models, Large Vision-Language Models, Image Tokenization
Contact
O1.E-04 · HPI Campus II
Dr. Max Thomas (Dipl. Chem.)
PhD researcher · Ongoing · openHPIFocus
Automatic Determination of Skills and Topics in MOOCs, Recommendation Services for Learners
Contact
O1.E-04 · HPI Campus II
Sebastian Serth, M.Sc.
PhD researcher · Thesis submitted · openHPIFocus
Scaling Programming Education in Massive Open Online Courses
Zuhra Sofyan, M.Sc.
PhD researcher · Thesis submitted · openHPIFocus
Learning Analytics in MOOCs, Behavioral Patterns, and Learner Engagement
Theresa Lemm, M.Sc.
PhD researcher · Thesis submitted · openHPIFocus
Empowering MOOC Learners: Integrating Learning Assistants for Effective Support in Digital Learning Environments
Want to join the group?
We offer thesis topics, student assistant jobs and PhD positions.
Doctoral alumni (15)
| Name | Completed | Now at | Thesis |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dr.-Ing. Eric Klieme | March 2025 | 50Hertz Transmission GmbH, Berlin | Securing Cyber and Physical Assets: Enhancing the Behavioral Authentication Landscape |
| Dr.-Ing. Alexander Mühle | November 2024 | Federal Ministry for Housing, Urban Development and Building, Berlin | Decoding Control: An Exploration of Self-Sovereign Identity |
| Dr. Daniel Köhler | November 2024 | Tanium, Berlin | Scalable Online Education to Enhance Phishing Awareness among the General Population |
| Dr. Seyed Ali Alhosseini | November 2023 | Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin | Classification, Prediction and Evaluation of Graph Neural Networks on Online Social Media Platforms |
| Dr.-Ing. Pejman Najafi | September 2023 | PostDoc@Sec-Eng | Leveraging Data Science & Engineering for Advanced Security Operations |
| Dr. Andreas Grüner | October 2022 | Atruvia AG, Frankfurt am Main | Towards Practical and Trust-Enhancing Attribute Aggregation for Self-Sovereign Identity |
| Dr. Muhammad Sukmana | March 2022 | PPI AG, Hamburg | Security Improvements for Enterprise File Synchronization and Sharing Systems |
| Dr. Aragats Amirkhanyan | December 2019 | Yara International, Berlin | Methods and Frameworks for GeoSpatioTemporal Data Analytics |
| Dr. Konrad-Felix Krentz | November 2019 | Siemens, Erlangen | A Denial-of-Sleep-Resilient Medium Access Control Layer for IEEE 802.15.4 Networks |
| Dr.-Ing. David Jaeger | September 2019 | Airbus Defence and Space, Munich | Enabling Big Data Security Analytics for Advanced Network Attack Detection |
| Dr.-Ing. Marian Gawron | March 2019 | DB Systel GmbH, Berlin | Towards Automated Advanced Vulnerability Analysis |
| Dr. Andrey Sapegin | March 2019 | Deutsche Telekom Technik GmbH, Berlin | High-Speed Security Log Analytics Using Hybrid Outlier Detection |
| Dr.-Ing. Martin Ussath | May 2018 | Materna SE, Dortmund | Analytical Approaches for Advanced Attacks |
| Dr. Amir Azodi | April 2016 | DSGV, Berlin | Towards Real-time SIEM Based Network Monitoring and Intrusion Detection Through Advanced Event Normalization |
| Dr. Sebastian Roschke | May 2012 | Snap Inc., California | Towards High Quality Security Event Correlation Using In-Memory and Multi-Core Processing |
Completed Master or Diplom theses (21)
| Name | Completed | Thesis | Type |
|---|---|---|---|
| Moritz Moser | May 2026 | Automating Compliance Requirement Mapping: A Multi-Stage, Audit-Oriented Pipeline | Master thesis |
| Emirkan Toplu | April 2026 | Security Monitoring and Operations in Modern Vehicle Systems | Master thesis |
| Mohamed Budagow | September 2025 | RedOps: An Integrated Platform for Red Team Exercises | Master thesis |
| Dominic Schaa | June 2025 | Enable Advanced Analytics for Security Information and Event Management Systems: AA4SIEM | Master thesis |
| Lieven Leue | March 2025 | Covert Channels and Micro-Protocols in Botnets | Master thesis |
| Lars Prepens | March 2025 | Fuzzing Apache: Improving Code Coverage and Bug Detection | Master thesis |
| Jonas Schmitz | August 2024 | Towards Data-driven Detection for Command and Control Traffic | Master thesis |
| Till Nowakowski | September 2023 | Predicting Privilege Necessity to Mitigate Lateral Movement Attacks in an Active Directory | Master thesis |
| Lukas Ehrmann | November 2022 | Intrusion Detection in Computer Networks Based on a Graph Neural Network | Master thesis |
| Leonard Marschke | October 2022 | On the Feasibility of Integrating OpenID Connect into Open-source Desktop Environments | Master thesis |
| Wenzel Pünter | February 2022 | Towards Mining Actionable Cyber Threat Intelligence from Process Behaviour Graphs | Master thesis |
| Kaja Schmidt | January 2022 | Mitigating Sovereign Data Exchange Challenges: A Conceptual Framework to Apply Privacy- and Trust-Enhancing Technologies | Master thesis |
| Volker Schiewe | January 2020 | Identity Recovery in Decentralised Systems | Master thesis |
| Balthasar Martin | February 2019 | Evaluating the Security of Cloud-based Remote Access for the Internet of Things | Master thesis |
| Daniel Stelter-Gliese | December 2016 | User-centric Realtime Embedded Web Application Firewalls | Master thesis |
| Marian Gawron | September 2013 | Vulnerability Modeling and Analytics: HPI-VDB | Master thesis |
| David Jaeger | August 2012 | Monitoring in Scenario-based Security Experiments | Master thesis |
| Robert Schuppenies | March 2009 | Automatic Extraction of Vulnerability Information for Attack Graphs | Master thesis |
| Sebastian Roschke | November 2008 | IDS Management on Lock-Keeper | Master thesis |
| Michael Menzel | August 2006 | Securing Web Services Using Lock-Keeper | Diploma thesis |
| Christian Liesegang | August 2006 | A Network Security Measurement Framework | Master thesis |
Former team members (27)
| Name | Role | Period |
|---|---|---|
| Mehrdad Hajizadeh, M.Sc. | Visiting PhD student · TU Chemnitz | August 2023–June 2026 |
| Chris Pelchen, M.Sc. | Research assistant | April 2016–February 2022 |
| Christian Tietz, M.Sc. | Research assistant | July 2015–June 2020 |
| Kennedy Torkura, M.Sc. | Research assistant | October 2013–October 2019 |
| Tatiana Gayvoronskaya | Research assistant | February 2016–July 2019 |
| Leonard Marschke | Working student | September 2019–March 2023 |
| Mirko Krause | Working student | October 2018–March 2019 |
| Marcus Konrad | Student assistant | January–December 2015 |
| Daniel Stelter-Gliese | Working student | April 2012–July 2015 |
| Willi Gierke | Student assistant | January–July 2015 |
| Carl Ambroselli | Student assistant | February–December 2014 |
| Marian Gawron | Student assistant | April 2012–September 2013 |
| Richard Meissner | Student assistant | October 2010–July 2013 |
| Florian Westphal | Student assistant | September 2010–April 2013 |
| David Jaeger | Student assistant | July 2009–July 2012 |
| Hubert Hesse | Student assistant | April–July 2012 |
| Bjoern Groneberg | Student assistant | September 2010–June 2011 |
| Thanh Dien Tran | Student assistant | November 2008–September 2009 |
| Robert Schuppenies | Student assistant · Google | January 2007–March 2009 |
| Ge Zhang | Intern · Google | October 2007–May 2008 |
| Sebastian Roschke | Student assistant | April 2007–October 2008 |
| Johannes Harungguan | Visiting researcher · November 2012–January 2013 | Indonesia |
| Dr. Yong Zhang | Visiting researcher · June–September 2011 | China |
| Piotr Szymanski | Visiting student · February–September 2010 | Poland |
| Dr. Lijuan Duan | Visiting researcher · June–September 2009 | China |
| Dr. Lichun Wang | Visiting researcher · June–July 2009 | China |
| Alberto Diniz Bueno Filho | Visiting student · July–September 2004 | Brazil |