Ruba Abu-Salma

Ruba Abu-Salma is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Computer Science at King’s College London. Ruba is affiliated with the Cybersecurity Group and Human-Centered Computing Group in the Department of Informatics. She is also the department’s Security Hub Co-Champion. Her research is interdisciplinary, sitting at the intersection of cybersecurity, privacy, human-computer interaction (HCI), emerging technologies, and public policy. She aims to understand and improve people’s security, privacy, and safety decision-making processes, with a focus on at-risk populations. Her work has been published at top-tier venues, including IEEE S&P (Oakland), USENIX Security, and ACM CHI, and has been featured in national and international media outlets such as The New York Times, The Register, and CNET. 

Before joining King’s in 2021, Ruba was a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Usable Security and Privacy Group at the International Computer Science Institute (ICSI) at the University of California, Berkeley, and in the PRIVATICS Team at INRIA Sophia Antipolis. 

Ruba defended her doctoral dissertation in 2019, earning a Ph.D. in Computer Science from University College London (UCL). Her dissertation focused on designing user-centered privacy-enhancing technologies. As a postgraduate student, she was supported by Google, a Marie-Skłodowska Curie Research Fellowship, and a Supporting Usability and Design in Security (SUDS) Fellowship from the Open Technology Fund (OTF). She also performed research at the Cambridge Cybercrime Center, Brave, and Telefónica Research.