MatchPoints 2025: Parallel Sessions

MatchPoints 2024 revolves around cybersecurity. Below you can see all the parallel sessions at the conference. The speakers in the sessions are hand-picked speakers from academia, the private sector and public organisations. The sessions follow the 6 themes of the conference. Read more about the themes below the session overview.

Thursday 18 April at 13.15-14.45

Multi-party Computation

Time: Thursday April 18 at 13.15-14.45
Auditorium: Jeppe Vontillius

Chair: Jesper Buus Nielsen, Professor, Aarhus University

Speakers:

Annemette Broch, Founder and Head of Operations, Data for GOOD Foundation
Take Control and Trust the Math!

Carsten Baum, Associate Professor, Technical University of Denmark
Screening DNA synthesis orders for hazards: efficiently and with privacy

Peter Frandsen, CTO, Partisia
Enabling collaboration while Preserving your Privacy

Cyber Resilience for Critical Infrastructure

Time: Thursday April 18 at 13.15-14.45
Auditorium: Bartholin

Chair: Aslan Askarov, Associate Professor, Aarhus University

Speakers:

Jens Myrup Pedersen, Professor, Aalborg University
Cyber Security in Critical Infrastructure: Attack trends and Defense challenges

Michael Stausholm, Principal security architect, Alexandra Instituttet
Coming legislation (NIS2 & CRA) and the importance of secure development

Peter Gorm Larsen, Head of Centre for Digital Twins, Aarhus University and Tomas Kulik, Senior Evangelist and solution Architect, Sweet Geeks
Security Issues in a Digital Twin Context

Quantum Computing

Time: Thursday April 18 at 13.15-14.45 
Auditorium: Merete Barker

Chair: James Chiang, Postdoc, Aarhus University

Speakers:

Nikolaj Zinner, Co-founder & CQO, Kvantify
Quantum computing - the what, the not, and the future

Deirdre Connolly, Cryptographic engineer, SandboxAQ
Going Post-Quantum

Karthik Bhargavan, Professor, INRIA/Cryspen
High Assurance Post Quantum Cryptography

Democracy and Fundamental Rights

Time: Thursday April 18 at 13.15-14.45
Auditorium: Eduard Biermann

Chair: Susanne Bødker, Professor, Aarhus University

Speakers:

Michael Bang Petersen, Professor, Aarhus University
Misinformation in the Age of Digital Democracy

Anja Møller Pedersen, Postdoc, University of Copenhagen
Privacy, democracy and data-driven policing

Carsten Schürmann, Professor, Center for Information Security and Trust at ITU
Digital Elections — How to Observe the Unobservable

Intro to hacking and Capture the Flag

Time: Thursday April 18 at 13.15-14.45
Auditorium: William Scharff

Hacking comes in many forms. One of them is Capture The Flag (CTF), which you will be introduced to here. In this introduction, we will discuss what a CTF is, how to participate, and go through the practical aspects of hacking which will make you able to solve tasks in a CTF challenge. We will cover various types of tasks and demonstrate a few hacking techniques. The session can be useful whether you want to participate in a CTF yourself or are simply curious about how hacking work.

The session will be held by Morten Eskildsen, Kalmarunionen (https://www.kalmarunionen.dk/). Morten and Kalmarunionen is also the main organizer for the Capture The Flag competition on Saturday 20 April at DOKK1. Read more here.

Thursday 18 April at 15.15-16.45

Privacy Enhancing Technologies

Time: Thursday April 18 at 15.15-16.45
Auditorium: Jeppe Vontillius

Chair: Peter Scholl, Associate Professor, Aarhus University

Speakers:

Jakob Pagter, VP MPC, Blockdaemon
Real World Wallet Security using Multiparty Computation

Anca Nitulescu, Cryptography Researcher, IOHK
When privacy is not enough: Zero-Knowledge Proofs to the rescue

Jonas Hansen, Cyber security specialist, Concordium
Privacy in Full Public: Anonymity & Accountability using Zero-Knowledge Proofs

Cyber Resilience from an Industry Perspective

Time: Thursday April 18 at 15.15-16.45
Auditorium: Bartholin

Chair: Gert Læssøe Mikkelsen, Head of Security Lab, Alexandra Instituttet

Speakers:

Emil Hansen, CTO, Cryptomathic
Building trust and resilience in a data driven world

Niels Ulrich Matthiessen and Mazen Qasem, Security Analysts, TDC Erhverv Security Operations Center 
Mitigation of DDoS attacks: Tactics and Techniques

Laura Lynggard Nielsen, Senior Security Anthropologist, Alexandra Instituttet
To click, or not to click: Viewing security policies from a human perspective 

Artificial Intelligence I

Time: Thursday April 18 at 15.15-16.45
Auditorium: Merete Barker

Chair: Michael Caspersen, Managing Director, IT-Vest

Speakers:

Kristoffer Laigaard Nielbo, Professor & Director, Center for Humanities Computing, Aarhus University
Beyond Words - Ethical and Security Challenges in AI-powered Language Technology

Leon Derczynski, Associate Professor, ITU Copenhagen
Language Model Security and Demon Summoning

David Clayton, Co-Founder and GenAI researcher, OSINTer
Cyber Security's New Sidekick - GenAI

Digital Regulation and Dark Patterns

Time: Thursday April 18 at 15.15-16.45
Auditorium: Eduard Biermann

Chair: Clemens Klokmose, Associate Professor, Aarhus University

Speakers:

Midas Nouwens, Associate Professor, Aarhus University
What does an empowered digital citizen look like

Michael Veale, Associate Professor, University College London
Why is It So Hard to Regulate Online Tracking

Boel Nelson, Postdoc, Aarhus University
Anonymization—friend or foe?

Cybersecurity in Banking

Time: Thursday April 18 at 15.15–16.45
Auditorium: Samfundsmedicinsk

Chair: Peer Kristensen, Director, Security Tech Space

Speakers:

Mads Schaarup Andersen, Lead IT Security Consultant, Bankdata
How Bankdata is Changing Developer Security Culture Through a Security Champions Program

Thomas Stig Jacobsen, Head of IT Security, Lunar Bank
Lunar's Cybersecurity Strategy: Securing the Future of Digital Banking

Anil Madhavapeddy, Professor, Cambridge University
Programming for the Planet

Friday 19 April at 11.00-12.30

Automated Solutions

Time: Friday April 19 at 11.00-12.30
Auditorium: Jeppe Vontillius

Chair: Carsten Schürmann, Professor, ITU 

Speakers:

Aslan Askarov, Associate Professor, Aarhus University
Why programming languages should be security-aware

Cas Cremers, Professor, CISPA
Automated Analysis of Security Protocols using Tamarin

David Basin, Professor, ETH Zurich
Robbing the Bank with a Model Checker

Cyber Resilience: Security by design from theory to practice

Time: Friday April 19 at 11.00-12.30
Auditorium: Bartholin

Chair: Peter Gorm Larsen, Professor, Aarhus University

Speakers:

Lars Birkedal, Professor, Aarhus University
Cyber Security and Semantics-based Program Verification

Gert Læssøe Mikkelsen, Head of Security Lab, Alexandra Instituttet
Security by Design in practice – that’s just a technical task, right?

Joanna Świątkowska, Deputy Director General, European Cyber Security Organisation
Supply chain cybersecurity - the bedrock of cyber resilience

Artificial Intelligence II

Time: Friday April 19 at 11.00-12.30
Auditorium: Merete Barker

Chair: Søren Dinesen Østergaard, Professor, Aarhus University

Speakers:

Hasan Rahman, Chief Security Advisor, Microsoft
AI and Cybersecurity: A Tragicomedy of Errors or a Perfect Solution?

Kim Mouridsen, Professor, Aarhus University
Can secure AI promote a more equal healthcare system?

Antigoni Polychroniadou, Executive DIrector, J.P. Morgan AI research
Advances and Challenges in Privacy Preserving Federated Learning

Cybersecurity in the energy sector

Time: Friday 19 April at 11.00-12.30 
Auditorium: Eduard Biermann

The energy sector is crucial in the green transition. However, it has become a target for nation-state cyber attacks. How do we keep our energy sector safe?

Chair: Kaj Grønbæk, Head of Department of Computer Science, Aarhus University

Speakers:

Jacob Guldberg, CIO, MFT Energy
Watts up with cybersecurity?

Aske Sønderup, Head of IT Infrastructure and Security, InCommodities
IT Security in the Energy Trading Sector: Simple and Effective Measures

Tobias Evar Lauridsen, CISO, Danske Commodities
Keeping the lights-on with business continuity

Rune Hylsberg Jacobsen, Professor, Aarhus University
Securing Smart Grids with Distributed Ledgers and Privacy Enhancing Technologies

Cybersecurity in Financial Technology

Time: Friday 19 April at 11.00-12.30 
Auditorium: Samfundsmedicinsk

Chair: Line Gerstrand, Head of Development, Security Tech Space

Speakers:

Jonas Hansen, Cyber security specialist, Concordium
A New Era in Finance: Security Through Simplicity

Jan Jans, Legal counsel, Finanstilsynet
DORA - Rethinking the laws of cyber risk in finance

Pernille Korzon, Co-founder & CPO, FinCrimeFighters
Know Your Supplier

Themes at MatchPoints 2024

  • Privacy and Identity

Privacy is a basic human right, but sometimes we want to give others limited access to our data. Can this be done in a safe and controlled way? 
In these sessions we will learn about privacy enhancing technologies, such as zero-knowledge proofs, homomorphic encryption, multi-party computation, but also techniques stemming from programming languages. These will be illustrated by practical applications such as health data, DNA synthesis and others. 
How we identify ourselves online also depends on privacy: what information do we want to reveal about ourselves? Can we reduce our dependence on third parties? 

  • Cyber Resilience

Cyberattacks are on the rise and often threaten our critical infrastructure. For example, the recent attack on the Danish electricity network. 
How can we safeguard against electricity, water or internet outages caused by hacking? What tools can computer science provide to help us build a cyber resilient society? 
In these sessions, we will hear about practical attacks, both from representants from academia and large companies. 
We will also hear about the principles of security by design and upcoming European regulation.  

  • Quantum computers and cybersecurity

Practical quantum computers will appear in this decade, but their design is already influencing finance, chemistry, and simulations in many other areas. 
In this session there will be an overview of such applications. In the future, quantum computers will be able to break most of the encryption protocols currently in use. So, data that needs to remain secret for many years needs new protocols already today. In this session, we will learn how to protect ourselves from such quantum adversaries and how the current transition to quantum-safe protocols provides an opportunity to avoid many other vulnerabilities, by using logic and programming languages. 

  • Democracy, digitalization and society

Is electronic voting safe? How can we stop the spread of misinformation in the era of social media, AI and surveillance capitalism? And how do we trust that authorities keep our sensitive data secured?  
How do bad actors use 'dark patterns' to influence us without our knowledge? 

  • Cybersecurity in the financial world

How can we keep our money safe? How can we develop trust in a global digital economy? How can we support the green transition? 
In these sessions, we will hear about a new decentralized digital economy, cyber security regulation in the financial sector, cybersecurity in internet banking and the safety of our debit and credit cards. And finally, how to use blockchains to avoid green washing.

  • AI and cybersecurity

AI (large language models) have become ubiquitous in our society. But there are many possibilities for bad actors to abuse them. In these sessions, we will see an overview of possible attacks. In addition, we will hear about practical applications of AI in health and finance, and how one can use techniques from cryptography to train large language models in a private way.