Willard Rafnsson

Willard Rafnsson is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the IT University of Copenhagen (ITU), where he conducts research in language-based security, programming-language theory, and formal methods. He is a member of the Center for Information Security and Trust (CISAT), the Programming, Logic and Semantics (PLS) group, and the Software Quality Research (SQUARE) group. He has held visiting and postdoctoral positions at Carnegie Mellon University and the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems.

His research focuses on enabling developers to build trustworthy software through program analysis, transformation, and information-flow control. He has led and contributed to multiple funded projects in cybersecurity, including static analysis for JavaScript, privacy risk modeling, and secure software education. His recent publications span top venues in security and programming languages, demonstrating a consistent focus on formal techniques for enforcing security policies and quantifying privacy risks.

Willard Rafnsson has served on program committees for IEEE SecDev, NordSec, FORTE, POST, and FCS, and regularly peer-reviews for CCS, S&P, CSF, NDSS, and other leading journals and conferences. He teaches courses in operating systems, program verification, and information security, and has developed educational materials for public cybersecurity awareness.

• PhD: Chalmers University, supervised by Andrei Sabelfeld
• Postdoc: Max Planck Institute for Software Systems (Deepak Garg), Carnegie Mellon University (Limin Jia, Lujo Bauer)
• Visiting Researcher: Carnegie Mellon University (Stephanie Balzer, 2022)

He actively supervises student projects in areas such as binary analysis, vulnerability fixing, formal verification, and privacy risk visualization, many of which have led to publications. He is also involved in public outreach, having participated in media interviews and educational videos on cybersecurity topics.