Professor Julia Rubin of the University of British Columbia in Canada has been awarded a research fellowship by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, and will therefore be spending several months over the next two years conducting research at Paderborn University. The fellowship is awarded to highly qualified academics who wish to spend a period of time conducting research in Germany and whose work stands out from the crowd. The programme is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the Federal Foreign Office.
Rubin completed a PhD in Computer Science at the University of Toronto and worked as a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Earlier, she spent almost ten years in industry, working for IBM Research, where she was a research staff member and a research group manager. Over the next few months, she will be conducting research at Paderborn University’s Heinz Nixdorf Institute together with Professor Eric Bodden, head of the ‘Secure Software Engineering’ research group.
Promoting international collaboration
Rubin emphasizes the value of joint international research: ‘My research focuses on helping developers build high-quality software. Specifically, my research interests are in software engineering, program analysis, software security, and software reliability. In the context of this program, I intend to build upon and extend my prior line of work on building high-quality and secure cloud-based systems. The collaboration with Professor Bodden, who is a world-renowned expert in program analysis and software security, is very valuable in this space. I hope this collaboration will allow us to leverage each other's expertise to solve real-life problems of practical importance.’ Rubin is convinced that her research stay at the Heinz Nixdorf Institute will lay the foundations for further joint initiatives.
Bodden is also looking forward to this direct exchange of experience on the ground. ‘When researchers live on the other side of the world, collaboration via videoconferences is not always particularly effective. In such cases, it is even more important to create opportunities for personal collaborations on the ground. Through its research fellowships, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation offers this exact opportunity paired with a particular reputation: receiving one of these fellowships is a prestigious accolade. I am therefore particularly delighted that Professor Rubin has been granted this honour, for a research stay of several months at Paderborn University. We are planning to work closely together on specific topics in the field of security by design. This is something that we would not otherwise be able to achieve.’
