Michael Backes

Michael Backes (born 7 January 1978) is a German professor of computer science. He is the founding director and CEO of the CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security. He is known for his work on formal methods, cryptography and privacy-enhancing technologies.

Life and career
Born in Germany, he received a diploma degree in computer science and a diploma degree in mathematics from Saarland University in 2001 and 2002, respectively, and obtained his PhD in computer science from Saarland University in 2002 under the supervision of Birgit Pfitzmann and Harald Ganzinger.

He was successively a researcher at IBM Research (2002 – 2005) and associate professor (2005) and professor (2006 – today) of computer science at Saarland University, Germany.

He is the founding director and CEO of the newly funded CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security, Germany, since 2018.

His research is concerned with information security and privacy, particularly on security and privacy in machine learning, trustworthy information processing and medical privacy; design, analysis and verification for security-critical systems and services, and universal solutions in software and network security.

Awards and honors
Backes has received a number of awards, including the following:
 * 2004: Caspar Bowden Award 2004
 * 2005: IBM Outstanding Achievement Award
 * 2007: Fellow of the Max Planck Society
 * 2008: IBM Faculty Award
 * 2008: MIT TR35
 * 2009: European Research Council Starting Grant
 * 2014: European Research Council Synergy Grant
 * 2015: Member of the German Academy of Science and Engineering
 * 2017: CNIL-INRIA Privacy Award
 * 2017: NSA Cybersecurity Research Award
 * 2018: Fellow of the IEEE
 * 2018: Honorary Doctorate degree of the University of Lorraine
 * 2023: ACM Fellow