Computer Science & AI

Systems and security

Researchers at LIACS are working to devise the computers of tomorrow that will be the backbone of the Cloud and Edge computing paradigms as well as the Internet of Things. In this respect, we are involved in research and development of high performance computing systems, embedded & real-time computing systems, and the necessary (cyber) security methods and techniques to protect such systems.

Efficient computing

Data processing, complex models (digital twins), scientific applications, AI, social networks, government services, and media streaming services all require more and more compute power. To make this work, large-scale computing infrastructure, such as supercomputers, clusters and clouds, are needed. These systems are pervasive, and most members of our society interact with them daily. As a result, data centres and high-performance-computing (HPC) systems are growing fast. However, their energy footprint is an urgent bottleneck. Between 1-3% of the total global energy use is used by datacentres now, and this is growing rapidly. Our “Efficient Computing” group focuses on making computer systems and their use more efficient, for example with smart programming languages and compilers, accelerators such as GPUs, optimized and automatically tuned algorithms, and the optimization of full software stacks. At the same time, the large scale of our digital infrastructure comes at the cost of increased complexity. We work on understanding and dealing with this complexity, allowing us to improve efficiency and usability with novel programming models and frameworks. Finally, we aim to achieve open, reproducible and repeatable science running atop large-scale computing infrastructure.

Cyber security

Cyber security is one of the critical challenges in our inter-connected world. Organizations are being constantly targeted by adversaries. Various critical systems become exposed on the Internet. Users can find that their data has been stolen from a company that they were not even aware of. The Cyber Security Lab investigates attacks and defenses spanning organizations, systems, software and hardware. Current research of the lab focuses on, among other, applied cryptography (efficient and secure crypto implementations and physical security), secure hardware/software co-design of edge devices, network intrusion detection, computing on encrypted data, secure software engineering and organizational cyber security.

Leiden Embedded & Real-time Computing

Leiden Embedded & Real-time Computing (LERC) is an expert lab and leader in advanced research on embedded and real-time systems and software. The main mission of LERC is by its research to contribute in a highly innovative way to the system-level design of embedded and cyber-physical systems and software -- conceptually (theory), methodologically (design methods and tools), and structurally (platforms/architectures). The LERC lab researches Cyber-Physical Systems, which are application-domain specific, information processing systems that are tightly coupled to the physical environment. More specifically, they have been investigating and devising fundamental methods and model-based techniques  as well as implementing them in software tools for the specification, design and development, programming, and verification of Embedded Systems-on-Chip (SoC).
More information about LERC 

Leiden Organizational Cyber Security

The Leiden Organizational Cyber Security (LOCS) team investigates different aspects of organizational cyber security. Our approach is multi-pronged: we look at technology and tools (e.g., performance of program analysis tools, explainable AI methods, automation of security technology) and processes and people (for example, how secure software engineering programs are organized in organizations and how to improve them, how attack trees are actually used in industry and how to facilitate practical adoption of academic theories of attack trees, how to select the most cost-effective countermeasures). In this way, we are able to identify relevant security issues and propose solutions that will work in practice.
More information about LOCS.