Our people
Executive Team
Professor Debi Ashenden - Director
Debi is Director of the Institute for Cyber Security at Â鶹Éçmadou. She previously held the DST Group-University of Adelaide Joint Chair in Cyber Security. In addition, she is a Visiting Professor at Royal Holloway, University of London in the UK. Debi’s research interests are
in interdisciplinary approaches to solving complex cyber security problems – particularly in finding ways of ‘patching with people’ as well as technology. She is currently researching how to fuse behavioural science with cyber deception, the security implications of MLOps, and the socio-technical aspects of designing complex military systems.
Debi was previously Head of the Centre for Cyber Security at Cranfield University at the Defence Academy of the UK and was a member of the UK MOD’s Defence Science Expert Committee. She has worked extensively across the public and private sector for organisations such as UK MOD, GCHQ, Cabinet Office, Â鶹Éçmadou Office, Euroclear, Prudential, Barclaycard, Reuters and Close Bros. She has had a number of articles on cyber security published, presented at a range of conferences and co-authored a book for Butterworth Heinemann, Risk Management for Computer Security: Protecting Your Network & Information Assets.
Ìý
Dr Andrew Reeves - Deputy Director
Dr Andrew Reeves is Deputy Director of IFCyber at the University of NSW. He is a registered Organisational Psychologist and received his PhD from the University of Adelaide, where he maintains an affiliation as a Visiting Research Fellow.
Andrew’s career spans not-for-profit, consultancy, and academic sectors. Previously, he was Director of Organisational and Behavioural Research at Cybermindz.org, an international non-profit dedicated to promoting mental wellbeing and resilience among cybersecurity teams. His research integrates psychological theories and methods to disrupt attacker decision-making, enhance mental health in cybersecurity professionals, and create effective tools to evaluate and foster robust cybersecurity cultures within organisations.
Kyle Mackey-Laws - Media and Communications Officer
Kyle is the Communications Content and Media Officer at IFCyber at the University of NSW. He has previously held positions at the Australian National University, working in communications at the College of Health and Medicine.
Prior to this, he worked in news media. Across more than 15 years, he held positions in sport and news, as a reporter, producer, print editor, chief of staff, sports editor and senior producer.
Faculty Leads
Associate Professor Katharine Kemp – Law & Justice
Katharine Kemp is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law & Justice, Â鶹Éçmadou Sydney, and leads the Â鶹Éçmadou Public Interest Law & Tech Initiative.Ìý
Katharine’s research focuses on competition, data privacy and consumer protection regulation. She has published widely in these fields, including "Misuse of Market Power: Rationale and Reform" (Cambridge University Press), "Competition Law of South Africa" (LexisNexis) with PJ Sutherland, and numerous peer-reviewed journal articles. In 2023, she was awarded the Emerging Leader Award at the national Australian Financial Review Higher Education Awards.Ìý
Before joining the faculty, Katharine was a Research Fellow on the Â鶹Éçmadou Digital Financial Services Research Team, conducting in-depth research into the regulation of digital financial services in developing countries in particular.Ìý
Dr Teresa Crea – Arts, Design & Architecture
Dr Teresa Crea is a narrative and simulation researcher, a writer|director and an academic passionate about emerging technologies and how they are impacting our narrative understandings from a neuroscientific perspective.
Her work in the field of simulation has included a range of industry collaborations with the defence sector on narrative sensemaking and information processing in immersive environments and pilot studies with the Simulation Unit at the Department of Anaesthesia, Royal Adelaide Hospital. Teresa has acquired broad multi sector knowledge of simulation and immersive environments through her industry networks and she continues to foster industry and academic partnerships to design solutions for a better future.Ìý
She obtained her DoctoralÌýDegree fromÌýUTS Sydney, winning the UTS Chancellor's Award and is currently the Program Lead for the Master of Simulation and Immersive Technologies in the Faculty of Arts, Design and Architecture.
Dr Sushmita Ruj – Computer Science & Engineering
Dr Sushmita Ruj is Senior Lecturer at the School of Computer Science and Engineering, Â鶹Éçmadou, Sydney. Her research interests are in applied cryptography, post quantum cryptography, blockchains and privacy enhancing technologies. She designs practical, efficient, and provably secure protocols that can be deployed in real-world applications. She explores security and privacy issues in cloud, smart grids, and data sharing platforms. She has extensively worked on cryptographic key distribution, identity and access management, secure cloud storage, search/analytics on encrypted data and blockchain security, privacy and scalability.
She has won several competitive grants like Samsung GRO Award, NetApp Faculty Fellowship, Cisco Academic Grant and IBM Research grant. She is an Associate Editor of the Transactions on Information Forensics and Security, Elsevier Journal on Information Security and Applications (JISA) and Elsevier Journal on Pervasive and Mobile computing (PMC). She served as a Program Co-Chair of ACISP 2021 and Indocrypt 2019.ÌýÌýShe served as a working group member of The National Blockchain Roadmap of Australia and a working group member of the First Blockchain initiative by Reserve Bank of India.
Before joining Â鶹Éçmadou, she was a Senior Research Scientist at CSIRO's Data61, an Associate Professor at Indian Statistical Institute and an Assistant Professor at Indian InstituteÌýofÌýTechnology, IIT, Indore. She held positions in Lund University, Sweden and University of Ottawa, Canada.
Sushmita is a senior member of both ACM and IEEE.
Associate Professor Benjamin Turnbull – Â鶹Éçmadou Canberra
Associate Professor Ben Turnbull is a researcher and practitioner working in the Digital Forensics, Cyber Security, Knowledge Representation and Visual Analytics domains. His research interests include novel approaches to securing computers and networks, automated learning from large datasets, forensic analysis of non-traditional devices, cyber security, cyber situation awareness, knowledge management, network analysis and visual analytics. Ben believes in real-world research that helps the community at large, and implementation is a large part of this. Additionally, he also work with the US Naval Research Laboratory, conducting research on the Tor network.
His research goal is to provide comprehensive situation understanding and decision support for all areas integrating cyber systems. As part of this, Ben's research the nexus of cyber security and kinetic effect to understand the true impacts of cyber-attack, best-practice automated analysis and visual techniques to aid decision support.Ìý
Visiting Fellows
Adjunct Professor Marcus Thompson
Professor Marcus Thompson holds an adjunct position in the Â鶹Éçmadou Institute for Cyber Security and is a retired Major General who served 34 years in the Australian Army.Ìý Graduating from the Royal Military College in 1988, Marcus was allocated to the Royal Australian Corps of Signals. He served in a variety of command, regimental and Special Operations appointments including: Command of the 3rd Combat Signal Regiment; secondment to the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet as the Senior Advisor Defence Policy and Operations; Director General Special Operations Capability; Commander 6th Brigade; and deployments to East Timor, Iraq, and Afghanistan. His final appointment was as the inaugural Head of Information Warfare for the Australian Defence Force.
Marcus holds a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering with honours from the University of New South Wales, a Bachelor of Business from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, a Master of Defence Studies from the University of Canberra, a Master of Strategic Studies from Deakin University, and a PhD in Cyber Security from the University of New South Wales. He was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia in the 2014 Queen’s Birthday Honours List.
Since leaving the Australian Army, Marcus has founded Cyber Compass Pty Ltd, an independent advisory focused on improving cyber security and developing sovereign Australian capability.Ìý He has worked with and supported several Australian entities, including Macquarie Telecom Group, NAB, Macquarie Bank, and the Melbourne Business School. He is the Chair of the Board of Penten, the Chair of the Board of ParaFlare, and a Non-Executive Director of Bank Australia.
