Ruba Abu-Salma is a Lecturer in Computer Science at King’s College London (KCL). Ruba is affiliated with the Cybersecurity Group and the Human Centered Computing Group in the Department of Informatics.

Her research is interdisciplinary. She works at the intersection of cybersecurity, privacy, human-computer interaction (HCI) and public policy. She aims to understand and improve people’s security, privacy and safety decision-making processes, with a focus on vulnerable, marginalized, and/or stigmatized populations. Her work has been published at top-tier venues, including IEEE S&P (Oakland), USENIX Security and ACM CHI. Her work has also been covered by the popular press such as The New York Times, The Register and CNET.

Before joining KCL 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 has also performed research at the Cambridge Cybercrime Center, Brave and Telefónica Research.