Davide Balzarotti

Davide Balzarotti is a Professor and Head of the Digital Security Department at EURECOM. His expertise spans reverse engineering, forensic memory analysis, advanced malware analysis, and web security. He holds a PhD in Computer Engineering from the Polytechnic Institute of Milan (2006), followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, Santa Barbara (2006–2008), and an HDR (Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches) from EURECOM in 2015.

His research focuses on understanding malware behavior, improving forensic techniques, and enhancing web security through machine learning and static analysis. Notable contributions include frameworks like ModSec-Learn for boosting intrusion detection and PhishEye for monitoring phishing kits. He has received multiple awards, including the Best Paper Award at SAC 2017 and the ACM Europe Student Best Paper Award at CCS 2016.

His work bridges academic research and practical cybersecurity challenges, addressing topics such as adversarial attacks, embedded system security, and evasion techniques in malware. His projects include evaluations of voting machine security (Project Everest) and collaborations to improve vulnerability detection in software.

• Education:
• PhD in Computer Engineering, Polytechnic Institute of Milan (2006)
• Postdoctoral Research at UCSB (2006–2008)
• HDR, EURECOM (2015)
• Awards:
• Best Paper Award (2017)
• ACM Europe Student Best Paper Award (2016)
• Best Student Paper Award (2013)
• Distinguished Paper Award (2011)
• Key Research Themes:
• Memory forensics
• Malware analysis
• Fuzzing and vulnerability discovery
• Web application security