The Secure Software Engineering (SSE) group at the University of Hamburg conducts research at the intersection of software engineering, cybersecurity, and artificial intelligence. Our goal is to design and develop methods, tools, and systems that enable the construction of trustworthy, secure, and practical software systems.

Our research broadly addresses how security and reliability can be systematically incorporated into the design, development, deployment, and evolution of modern software systems. We combine software engineering methods with security research and empirical evaluation, with a strong emphasis on practical applicability and real-world systems.

Currently, our research places particular emphasis on two directions:

• Secure Software Engineering for AI-Integrated Systems. We investigate how AI components, including large language models and autonomous agents, can be securely and reliably integrated into software systems. This includes identifying new security and privacy risks introduced by AI components and developing engineering methods, architectures, and tools for building trustworthy AI-enabled software.
• Software Engineering for Edge AI. We study methods and architectures for developing and operating AI-enabled systems on edge devices and local infrastructure. Our research focuses on challenges related to security, privacy, efficiency, distributed execution, and data sovereignty.