Leo Dessani, M.Sc.

Research Assistant, PhD Candidate and Associate Lecturer


Email: leo.dessani(at)uni-saarland.de

Campus A5 4, Room 0.24


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Personal information

  • Research Asssistant and PhD Candidate at CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security and at the Chair of Legal Informatics at Saarland University. Previously, student assistant at the Chair of Legal Informatics at Saarland University, at the Chair of Information Security at the Nuremberg Institute of Technology and at the Chair of Embedded Systems at the University of Tübingen.
  • Associate Lecturer for IT security and data protection at the German University of Administrative Sciences in Speyer
  • Associate Lecturer for IT security and secure software development at Reutlingen University
  • Master's degree in Computer Science and Bachelor's degree in Media Informatics from the University of Tübingen

Research interests

  • Technical data protection (basics and application)
  • Privacy-Preserving Machine Learning
  • Security in computer networks and (web) applications
  • Usable Security & Privacy
  • Algorithms and (privacy) law

Talks

  • “Von Bits zu Beweisen: Eintauchen in die Welt der IT-Forensik”, Saarbrücker Forschungstage on Computer Science at Saarland University, Saarbrücken, June 2024
  • “A Privacy-Preserving Architecture for Collaborative Botnet Detection“, Doctoral Forum of the SICHERHEIT 2024 Conference, Worms, April 2024
  • “Machine Unlearning and its Legal and Technical Implications“, ILPC Annual Conference 2023, London, November 2023 (with Nils Wiedemann)
  • “Multimedia-Forensik und der Einsatz von künstlicher Intelligenz“, Interest Group Criminal Law of the Saarländischer Anwaltverein, Saarbrücken, October 2023
  • “Von Bits zu Beweisen: Eintauchen in die Welt der IT-Forensik“, Saarbrücker Forschungstage on Computer Science at Saarland University, Saarbrücken, June 2023
  • “MTA Extension for User-friendly Enforcement of Mandatory TLS Encryption“, The 37th International Conference on Advanced Information Networking and Applications (AINA-2023), online, March 2023
  • “Federated Learning als Chance für datenschutzfreundliche KI?”, Telemedicus Summer Conference, Berlin, July 2022 (joint talk with Maximilian Leicht)
  • “E-Mail-Verschlüsselung mittels GnuPG und das Web of Trust“, Tübix, Tübingen, June 2016 (joint talk with Michael Weiss, Roman Schulte and Justin Humm), Link: https://www.tuebix.org/2016/programm/michael-weiss-e-mail-verschluesselung-mittels-gnupg-und-das-web-of-trust/

Research projects

Teaching

  • Winter semester 2025/2026:
    • Seminar “Juristisches Internetprojekt” (Saarland University)
    • Lecture “Secure Software Development” (Reutlingen University)
    • Lecture “Linux Summer School” (Reutlingen University)
  • Summer semester 2025:
    • Seminar “IT Security and Data Protection in Practice” (German University of Administrative Sciences Speyer)
  • Winter semester 2024/2025:
    • Lecture “Secure Software Development” (Reutlingen University)
    • Seminar “Juristisches Internetprojekt” (Saarland University)
  • Summer semester 2024:
    • Seminar “Legal Consequences of IT Security Incidents” (German University of Administrative Sciences Speyer)
  • Winter semester 2023/2024:
    • Lecture “Secure Software Development” (Reutlingen University)
    • Seminar “Legal Consequences of IT Security Incidents” (German University of Administrative Sciences Speyer)
  • Summer semester 2023:
    • Instructor and Tutor for the lecture “IT Forensics” (Saarland University)
  • Winter semester 2022/2023:
    • Lecture “IT Security Law” (German University of Administrative Sciences Speyer)
    • Seminar “Legal Consequences of IT Security Incidents” (German University of Administrative Sciences Speyer)
  • Summer semester 2022:
    • Lecture “IT Security” (Reutlingen University)
    • Instructor and Tutor for the lecture “IT Forensics” (Saarland University)
  • Summer semester 2021:
    • Instructor and Tutor for the lecture “IT Forensics” (Saarland University)
  • Winter semester 2018/2019:
    • Tutor for the lecture “Fundamentals of Multimedia Technology” (University of Tübingen)
  • Winter semester 2017/2018:
    • Tutor for the lecture “Fundamentals of Multimedia Technology” (University of Tübingen)

 

Supervised theses

  • Bachelor Thesis (2025): Trusting Parameters: Interoperability within a Zero Trust Architecture
  • Bachelor Thesis (2023): Privacy-Preserving Federated Learning for Flow-based Botnet Detection

Publications