Elena Ferrari is a full professor of Computer Science at theย University of Insubria, Italy where she leads the STRICT SociaLab.ย She received her Ph.D and M.Sc. degree in Computer Science from the University of Milano (Italy).
Her research interests are in the broad area of cybersecurity, privacy, and trust. Her research projects aim at creating technologies enabling efficient and effective data sharing without sacrificing privacy or security. She has done extensive research in a variety of application domains, ranging from social networks, to relational and NoSql databases, cloud and service computing, workflow management systems, emergency management, and Iot ecosystems. Current research includes security and privacy for Iot and Knowledge Graphs, access control, machine learning for cybersecurity, risk analysis, blockchain, and zero trust architectures. Prof. Ferrari has published several books and more than 280 papers in international journals and conference proceedings. She has received several awards, including the 2024 IEEEย ๐๐ป๐ป๐ผ๐๐ฎ๐๐ถ๐ผ๐ป ๐ถ๐ป ๐ฆ๐ผ๐ฐ๐ถ๐ฒ๐๐ฎ๐น ๐๐ป๐ณ๐ฟ๐ฎ๐๐๐ฟ๐๐ฐ๐๐๐ฟ๐ฒ ๐๐๐ฎ๐ฟ๐ฑ, for pioneering and sustained contributions to the security and privacy of online social networks, the ACM SIGSAC Outstanding Contributions Award (2021), for her outstanding research contributions and leadership in data security and privacy, the 2009 IEEE Technical Achievement Award for pioneering contributions to Secure Data Management, the ACM CODASPY Research Award for lasting and innovative research contributions to the cybersecurity and privacy fields (2019), the ACM SACMAT 10 Year Test of Time Award (2019), an IBM Faculty Award (2014), and a Google Research Award (2010). She was electedย an IEEE Fellow in 2012 for her research contribution to security and privacy for data and applications. In 2019, she has been named ACM fellow for contributions to security and privacy of data and social network systems.
Prof. Ferrari currently serves as associate editor in chief of IEEE Internet Computing. She is associate editor for the ACM Transactions on Data Privacy and Security, ACM Computing Surveys,ย IEEE Transactions on Services Computing, Data Science and Engineering, and the International Journal of Cooperative Information Systems.ย She is theย steering committee memberย of the ACM Symposium on Access Control Models and Technologies (ACM SACMAT) and has been the PC chair of several major conferences in the data management and security/privacy fields (e.g., ACM SACMAT, IEEE ICDE, ICWS, SCC, ACM/IEEE ASONAM, IEEE TPS). She has also repeatedly served on the program committees of all major data management conferences (including ACM SIGMOD, VLDB, ACM CCS, IEEE ICDE,ย ACM KDD, the WebConf). She has delivered several invited keynotes talks on data security and privacy and has given invited tutorials on many Ph.D. schools.
Prof. Ferrariโs has led several research projects in the last years, ranging from social network privacy and Iot, to online privacy, critical infrastructure protection, and many more. Projects have been funded by several companies and institutions, including EU Commission, Google, IBM, and the Italian Ministry for University and Research.
Elena Ferrari also extensively promotes cybersecurity and privacy to women and has supervised numerous female PhD students. In 2018, she has been named one of the 50 most influential Italian women in tech.