Prof. Dr. Verena Zimmermann

Verena Zimmermann is Assistant Professor (Tenure Track) for Security, Privacy and Society at ETH Zürich. Her research interests comprise the Human Aspects of Safety, IT Security and Privacy.

She has completed her dissertation in the interdsiciplinary research area of Usable Security at TU Darmstadt. Within the research group Work and Engineering Psychology and ATHENE, the German National Center for Applied Cybersecurity, she worked on several security-related reserach projects. The topics ranged from usable authentication over privacy-friendly smart home concepts and the human-centered design of hand-over tasks in smart cars to adressing security challenges in smart cities. Her dissertation with the title «From the Quest to Replace Passwords towards Supporting Secure and Usable Password Creation” received two dissertation awards by German Association for Data Protection and Data Security e.V. (GDD) and the Ernst-Ludwigs-Hochschulgesellschaft.

Verena Zimmermann has been a visiting researcher at the Safety Science Innovation Lab led by Prof. Sidney Dekker in Brisbane, Australia and the Cybersecurity Division at Abertay University, Scotland where she worked with Dr. Karen Renaud. She is also an associate in the Research Training Group 2050 Privacy and Trust for Mobile Users.

Verena Zimmermann published in several journals and conferences related to research at the intersection of humans and technology such as the International Journal of Human-Computer Studies (IJHCS), Behaviour & Information Technology, the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI), and the Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS). Her journal article „Moving from a “Human-as-Problem“ to a “Human-as-Solution“ Cybersecurity Mindset“ was awarded with a IANUS award for scientific-technological peace and security research (2nd place).