On September 5-6, 2023, 17 outstanding early career researchers, from the fields of crypto implementation, physical attacks, secure testing methods, and machine learning security, came together for a Young Scientists Meeting, hosted in Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany. The title of the meeting was the Workshop on Security Testing & Verification (STEVE), and it was co-sponsored by the CASA Excellence Cluster, the German Israeli Foundation for Scientific Research and Development, and the Bochum Wirtschaftsentwicklung.

The workshop was organized by Eyal Ronen (Tel-Aviv University) and Yossi Oren (Ben-Gurion University) from the Israeli side, together with Tim Güneysu, Veelasha Moonsamy and Pascal Sasdrich, all from Ruhr-Universität Bochum, on the German side. The Israeli participants came from Ben-Gurion University, Tel-Aviv University and the Technion. The German participants came from Ruhr-Universität Bochum, the Max Planck Institute for Security and Privacy, Universität Duisburg-Essen and Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg.

The workshop featured a scientific program including lightning talks, poster sessions, plenary discussions, scientific speed dating, and several social events.

During the workshop, the early career researchers became acquainted with each other’s work, learned about funding and collaboration opportunities, and discussed their ideas with established scientists in their field of research.

The feedback from the participants was extremely positive, and we all thank CASA, GIF, and the Bochum Wirtschaftsentwicklung, for their support of this important event, and for this opportunity to create personal connections between the early career researchers, which will undoubtedly blossom into further academic relationships in the future.

Quote from Michal Shagam, a participant from TAU:

“In one word – Aufregend!

We came to STEVE to share our research, find interesting new collaborations and learn more about the Security research hub in Bochum. The delegation group from Israel also included students from 3 different universities giving us an opportunity to meet as well.

We arrived at a scenic location by the botanical gardens at Ruhr university to hear the lightning talks. We raised many questions and issues in the plenary discussions where we got to talk more about the future challenges in our subject of choice. The posters were very interesting, giving more information about the research plans, and the questions provided additional perspectives on our research.

This was a great opportunity to meet new researchers and experience the culture in Bochum.” 

Quote from Abhishek Shah, a participant from MPI-SP:

“The STEVE workshop was undoubtedly one of the best workshops I have ever attended. It was clear that the organizers had put a lot of deliberate thought into its design. Instead of the traditional lecture format, they introduced a novel format tailored to support early career researchers, fostering meaningful discussions not only about my own research but also about the work of others.

As a result, I’ve already started discussing potential future collaborations with fellow participants, making this workshop incredibly valuable for my career development.”