Cohort 2024 Projects

Cheng Cheng	Security, Privacy, and Consent in FemTech Apps My research focuses on security, privacy, and consent in Female Technology (FemTech) systems, such as period or menopause tracking apps like Flo. FemTech aims to empower women through personalised health insights, but it often collects large amounts of sensitive data, such as information about reproductive health, sexual activity, and mood. These data are sometimes shared with third parties in opaque ways, creating complex data networks where users have little control or understanding. This can lead to privacy risks as well as emotional, social, or even physical safety concerns, especially in sensitive legal or domestic situations. My research explores why consent mechanisms in FemTech often fail to protect users. I study the technical, design, and transparency barriers that make it hard for users to give meaningful consent. The goal is to expose the gap between what users expect and what actually happens to their data, and to help build safer and more trustworthy digital health systems.	Dr Marvin Ramokapane (Bristol)
Lucy Davies		Dr Partha Das Chowdhury (Bristol) Dr Joanna Syrda (Bath)
Lauren Davis	Mapping the Intersection of Offender Psychology and Platform Design: How Digital Affordances Facilitate Online Child Grooming The ubiquitous integration of platforms like Roblox and Discord into children's social lives has amplified the risk of online sexual exploitation. Despite platform safety claims, repeated cases of grooming and exploitation highlight substantial gaps, revealing how offenders strategically exploit technological features. This PhD research addresses the critical nexus between offender psychology, manipulative tactics, and platform digital affordances (e.g., anonymity, persistent communication, immersive interaction). The study aims to move beyond viewing platforms as mere hosts for exploitation, focusing instead on how their design features are actively co-opted. A mixed-methods approach will analyze legal records, academic case data, and online environment dynamics to establish offender typologies and map their interactions with specific affordances.	Dr Catherine Hamilton-Giachritsis (Bath) Dr Olivia Brown (Bath)
Isabel Jones	Community Resilience to Attacks from Multi-Agent AI Research into the deployment of AI agents into online communities is increasing, with rising investment supporting their autonomous deployment across industry. This alongside progress enabling agents to collaborate through conversation, suggests the likely formation of networks where AI and humans interact. Yet, the potential social harms of these multi-agent systems remain understudied. This research aims to understand the risks and vulnerabilities that can arise in networks of humans and LLMs. This may include LLMs colluding or competing with one another at the expense of humans, or humans changing their group behaviours and trust networks. The work aims to inform the 'evidence dilemma' in policy-making, where harms of new technology are not evidenced quickly enough before the technologies are deployed. The research also seeks to test interventions and mitigations for any harms that may emerge.	Dr Matthew Edwards (Bristol) Dr Janina Hoffmann (Bath)
Sam Kelly		Dr François Dupressoir (Bristol) Ms Wrenna Robson (Bristol) Dr Daniel Page (Bristol)
Wambui Njogu	Achieving Cyber-Resilience Through Cross-Boundary Inter-SIEM Integration The recent past has experienced a proliferation of information systems aimed at automating processes and increasing output. However, this expansion has not only provided malicious attackers with a larger attack surface to exploit, but the threats extend to component failures, and acts of nature. As such, there’s a growing need to make these systems cyber-resilient, and preparing for all eventualities allows the world to better embrace uncertainty, and resilience enables the governance of that uncertainty. Considering the sea of cybersecurity tools that exist, Security Information and Event Management System (SIEMs) became of particular interest as it offers single-pane-of-glass monitoring which involves consolidating data and information from various sources and providing a comprehensive view of an organisation’s infrastructure. However, for cyber resilience to be truly effective, SIEMs must be integrated across organizational and infrastructural boundaries. This presents a conundrum that this research seeks to address.	Professor Awais Rashid (Bristol)
Leonardo Spreafico		Dr Chloe Martindale (Bristol) Sofia Celi (Honorary Industrial Fellow in Cryptography for Privacy at Bristol) Dr Ola Michalec (Bristol)
Suner Syuleyman		Dr Sana Belguith (Bristol) Dr Stanislav Abaimov (Bristol)
Jiun Tang	Understanding Older Adults’ Cyber Resilience: A Systematic Approach Digital technology has been adopted rapidly since the pandemic in 2020. Meanwhile, cybercrime such as scams, phishing attacks and misinformation has increased. Vulnerable groups of the population are less able to defend themselves against online risks. A survey in England and Wales found that older adults suffer more severe cases of cybercrime (e.g., financial loss) and repeat victimisation. In 2025, the UK government enacts the Cyber Security and Resilience Bill to support the National Cyber Strategy (NCS) to protect the country’s digital economy and to defend the “whole of society” with the ambition of “building a resilient and prosperous digital UK”. A definition of resilience is “the capacity to learn, recover and bounce back after having negative or adverse experiences online, encompassing both human psychological and behavioural dimensions”. Previous studies in the resilience of older adults have focused on family and social support, self-empowerment, digital literacy, and cyber security behaviours. However, less is focused on investigating technology design for older adults informed by linking vulnerability factors and cyber resilience. This PhD research aims to understand the vulnerabilities of older users and to contribute to the knowledge of cyber security considerations for software designers. To achieve these goals, the research proposes this overarching research question: How can we build resilient digital ecosystems for vulnerable older users? This question can be narrowed down to the following research questions:RQ1: What are older adults' vulnerabilities and sources of resilience?RQ2: How do developers negotiate these vulnerabilities when designing digital products for older users?	Dr Joanne Hinds (Bath) Dr James Fletcher (Bath) Professor Adam Joinson (Bath)