Steffen Becker

Steffen Becker is a Junior Research Group Leader at the Research Center Trustworthy Data Science and Security, Ruhr University Bochum, Germany (since July 2024). Previously, he was a Postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Security and Privacy (MPI-SP) and the CASA Cluster of Excellence (2021–2024). His research focuses on Hardware Security, including Human Factors in Reverse Engineering, Hardware Obfuscation, and End-User Privacy. He holds a PhD from the Embedded Security Group at Ruhr University Bochum (2017–2021) and a Master’s (2014–2016) and Bachelor’s (2011–2014) in IT-Security from the same institution. He also completed a visiting research stint at the University of Michigan (2016) and an exchange program at Purdue University (2014–2015).

• Education:
• Bachelor of Science in IT-Security, Ruhr University Bochum (2011–2014)
• Master of Science in IT-Security, Ruhr University Bochum (2014–2016)
• PhD in IT-Security, Embedded Security Group, Horst Görtz Institute, Ruhr University Bochum (2017–2021)
• Research Interests: Hardware Trojans, Privacy Engineering, and Secure Embedded Systems. His work bridges human factors in hardware security and practical defenses against obfuscation and tampering.
• Affiliations: Research Center Trustworthy Data Science and Security, MPI-SP, CASA Cluster of Excellence.