Marta F. Arroyabe, University of Essex
RISCS Senior Fellow
Dr Marta F. Arroyabe is Deputy Director of the Institute for Analytics and Data Science and a Reader at Essex Business School. Her research explores the intersection of digitalisation, cyber security, and strategic decision-making in small and medium enterprises (SMEs), with a focus on enhancing cyber resilience in the context of digital transformation. She has led and contributed to several projects funded by Innovate UK, ESRC, and the Leverhulme Trust, including initiatives on cyber security maturity tools and the adoption of secure digital technologies in SMEs. Marta is also a member of the Eastern Cyber Resilience Centre’s Advisory Group and the Bank of England’s Academic Advisory Group on Central Bank Digital Currency. Her work has been widely published in leading journals such as Computers & Security and Technological Forecasting and Social Change.
Sana Belguith, University of Bristol
RISCS Senior Fellow
Dr Sana Belguith is a Senior Lecturer in Cyber Security at the University of Bristol. Her current research focuses on security and privacy in distributed systems such as investigating security issues in satellite systems, autonomous vehicles, smart cities, and intelligent transportation systems. Her recent works involve threat modelling of space systems security in the presence of AI and ML models, and investigating quantum computing threats to critical national infrastructure. She also looks at privacy issues in distributed systems such as privacy-preserving smart home applications and the application of the right to be forgotten in machine learning. Her expertise in technical aspects of cyber security combined with her deep understanding of legal requirements and social implications enables her research to follow an interdisciplinary approach to solving cyber security issues in distributed systems, with a particular focus on the implications of using new technologies.
She holds a PhD from the Polytechnic School of Tunisia. Her PhD focused on developing privacy-preserving encrypted access control mechanisms for medical data shared in cloud-based systems. After completing her PhD, she joined the University of Auckland (New Zealand) as a postdoctoral researcher, where her research was funded by the STRATUS project (Security Technologies Returning Accountability, Trust and User-centric Services in the Cloud), which is funded by the Ministry of Business, Innovation, and Employment (MBIE) of New Zealand. She has been working on security and privacy issues in distributed systems such as ‘publish and subscribe’ systems, IoT, and cloud computing.
Sana has led and contributed to multiple research projects: Project Co-I for ‘SCULI: Securing Convergent Ultra-large Scale Infrastructures’ (2024-2029), PI for ‘ASSAI: Assessing Space Security in the Presence of AI’ (2024-2025), PI for ‘Securing Critical Infrastructure in the Quantum Era: From Awareness to Seamless Migration Towards Post-Quantum Cryptography Security’ (2023-24), PI for ‘WalletFind: A Forensic Solution for Cryptocurrency e-Discovery, Recovery, Tracing and Auditing’ (2020-2021), Co-I for ‘Privextractor: Smart Home Privacy Extractor’ (2020), PI for ‘Drones-Highway: Towards Deploying a Drones-based Transport System in Greater Manchester’ (2020-21), and PI for ‘Greater Manchester Cyber Foundry (ERDF) to improve SME cyber operations’ (2019-21).
Joe Burton, Lancaster University
RISCS Senior Fellow
Dr Joe Burton is Professor of International Security in the School of Global Affairs (SGA) at Lancaster University. He joined the university in July 2023 as part of the Security and Protection Science initiative. Prior to that he held permanent positions at the University of Nottingham and the University of St Andrews and was a Marie Curie (MSCA-IF) fellow at Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), working on the two-year European Commission-funded project Strategic Cultures of Cyber Warfare (CYBERCULT).
Joe is the author of NATO’s Durability in a Post-Cold War World (SUNY Press, 2018), editor of Emerging Technologies and International Security: Machines the State and War (Routledge, 2020), and his work on Artificial Intelligence and Cyber Security has been published in a range of leading scientific journals, including International Affairs, Journal of Global Security Studies, Technology in Society, Asian Security, Defence Studies, the Cyber Defence Review, the RUSI Journal and Political Science.
Dr Burton has served as a ministerial advisor in New Zealand and the UK. He was the coordinator of the CYDIPLO Jean Monnet Network on Cyber Diplomacy (2020-2024) and a recipient of the US Department of State (DoS) SUSI Fellowship (New York, Washington D.C.), the Taiwan Fellowship (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Taipei), and has been a visiting researcher and lecturer at the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence (CCDCOE) in Tallinn, Estonia. Joe has implemented projects and received funding from the US Department of State, the Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA), the NATO Science for Peace and Security Programme (NATO SPS), NATO CCDCOE, the European Commission (Marie Curie program and Jean Monnet Network lead), the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), the Alan Turing Institute (CETaS) and the New Zealand Department for Prime Minister and Cabinet (DPMC). Professor Burton has extensive experience of futures methods, scenario and simulation design and implementation and has received formal NATO/EU training in this area.
Lizzie Coles-Kemp, Royal Holloway, University of London
RISCS Principal Fellow
Lizzie Coles-Kemp is Professor of Information Security at Royal Holloway University of London and specialises in the design of accessible and inclusive security technologies, practices, and processes. She pioneered the use of creative engagement practices within the domain of information security research. In her role as Principal Fellow, Lizzie works on the topic of digital responsibility. She has a long track-record of working in partnership with the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) and with UK government departments for science, innovation, and technology (DSIT) and for culture, media, and sport (DCMS). Lizzie is currently Head of Department for Information Security, is a former EPSRC research fellow, and is a member of the College of Experts for both DSIT and DCMS.
Daniel Thomas, University of Strathclyde
RISCS Senior Fellow
Dr Daniel R. Thomas is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Strathclyde where he is Director of the NCSC-certified Academic Centre of Excellence in Cyber Security Research (ACE-CSR). His research interests are in measuring security, cyber-resilience, and cybercrime so that we can monitor improvement, evaluate interventions, and inform regulators. This reveals which techniques work and provides the missing economic incentives to improve security and resilience while reducing cybercrime. He co-organises the Strathclyde International Perspectives on Cybercrime Summer School, which next runs 24th-28th August 2026.