Ahornstraße 55, building E3 52074 Aachen Germany | |
9032 | |
+49 241 80-21411 | |
jan.pennekamp@comsys.rwth-aachen.de |
Research My fields of research cover the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), Information Systems, and Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs). In these areas, I am primarily interested in security & privacy implications as well as the application and the design of secure computation, covering both privacy-preserving and privacy-enhancing technologies. Additionally, I am interested in all kinds of research methodology (in computer science). Recently, I moved into healthcare-related research. As part of this direction, I am studying the implications and utility of synthetic data.
Background I am a postdoctoral researcher at the Chair of Communication and Distributed Systems, where I also pursued my Ph.D. studies in part time from 2018 to 2023; researching security and privacy in the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). I am a member of the Security and Privacy research group. In 2011, I began my studies in Computer Science at RWTH Aachen University, received my B.Sc. degree in 2014, and graduated with M.Sc. degree in 2018. In 2014, I studied abroad at Aalto University for one academic year. Besides, in 2015, I interned at the SECAN-Lab at the University of Luxembourg for six month where I worked on website fingerprinting in anonymization networks. The corresponding artifacts were selected as a finalist for the Artifacts Competition and Impact Award at ACSAC 2022.
Awards I am a Klaus Tschira Boost Fund Fellow 2025 (selection ratio below 5%). Moreover, I am attendee of the 12th Heidelberg Laureate Forum in 2025. In 2022, my team and I received the “Young Researcher Award 2022” of the Cluster of Excellence “Internet of Production” for our interdisciplinary research. In 2021, the profile area of information and communication technologyawarded me with the “ICT Young Researcher Award”. Besides, I received stipends to attend RWC 2020 and ACSAC 2022. Furthermore, I was awarded the 1st prize of TDWI Award 2018 for the best master thesis in the area of analytics, big data, and business intelligence. In 2018, I received a Google Scholarship for my Ph.D. studies due to my academic achievements and my persistent demonstration of leadership. During my studies, as part of a Research Focus Class, our team’s submission to the 2016 iDASH Genome Privacy & Security Competition was ranked runner-up and awarded with the HLI and Genecloud Award.
Talks Please have a look at my personal website for an up-to-date overview of past presentations.
Teaching For a list of advised theses, see the list below. You may send me a message if you are interested in writing a thesis with me. Please contact me on a first-name basis. I’m Jan :-). For a list of (other) teaching activities I was involved in, please take a look at my personal website.
I am primarily researching in the Cluster of Excellence “Internet of Production”, where I am also serving as the deputy workstream coordinator for CRD-A Workstream I (since April 2019). Moreover, I am currently holding (lead) positions in the following projects: CALCIPROTECT, RFC, RUST, SUSTAINET_guarDian, and SYNCLIVER. In the past, I further participated in the following projects: COAT (2023-2024). As a student assistant (2016-2018), I was involved in the TRINICS project to increase the consumer awareness of cloud services.
See also Web of Science.
Organizer IEEE Conference on Industrial Cyber-Physical Systems (ICPS: 2025; Special Session)
Program Committee Member Building a Secure & Empowered Cyberspace (BuildSEC: 2024, 2025), IEEE International Conference on Blockchain (BLOCKCHAIN: 2024), IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy (EuroS&P: 2025), IEEE International Conference on Blockchain and Cryptocurrency (ICBC: 2024, 2025), IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (S&P: 2020; Student PC + Poster Jury), International Congress on Blockchain and Applications (2023, 2024, 2025), The ACM Web Conference (TheWebConf/WWW: 2024; Outstanding Reviewer Award; 2025 + PhD Symposium), Workshop on Sustainable Technologies for the Next-Generation of Resilient and Energy-Efficient Mobile Networks (STREEM: 2025)
Reviewer for Conferences CITA (2021), CSAE (2020, 2021), CPSL (2025), EuroS&P (2022), FEBM (2021), HICSS (2021, 2022, 2023, 2025), ICPS (2025), ITU-K (2024), MobiQuitous (2020), NDSS (2025), PETS (2020.3, 2020.4, 2021.2, 2021.3, 2022.2)
Reviewer for Journals ACM Transactions on the Web (2025), applied sciences (2023), Blockchain: Research and Applications (2022, 2023), Computer (2020), Computer Communications (2022, 2023, 2024), Computer Networks (2025), Computers in Industry (2022, 2023, 2024), Computers & Security (2021, 2022, 2023, 2024), Data & Knowledge Engineering (2024), Expert Systems with Applications (2022, 2024), Future Generation Computer Systems (2022, 2023, 2024), IEEE Access (2024), IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing (2022, 2023), IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management (2022, 2023, 2025), International Journal of Information Management (2018), International Journal of Information Security (2023), International Journal of Information Technology & Decision Making (2022), Internet of Things (2022), Journal of Big Data (2023), Journal of Cybersecurity and Privacy (2025), Journal of Information Security and Applications (2020, 2021, 2023), machines (2022), Pervasive and Mobile Computing (2019, 2021, 2022, 2023), Security and Communication Networks (2023), sensors (2021, 2022), Scientific Reports (2024), SoftwareX (2022), sustainability (2022), systems (2022, 2024), Transactions on Emerging Telecommunications Technologies (2021)
Young Researcher Supervision Development of a Privacy-preserving Infection Risk Assessment Protocol (2021, Co-supervisor as part of a Mitacs Globalink Research Award), Ensemble Learning to the Rescue: Improving Machine Learning-based Industrial Intrusion Detection (2022, Speed Fund Project in RWTH’s ICT Profile Area), Recognizing Websites in Tor with Machine Learning (2019, Supervisor for UROP Intern), Reproduction and Replication of Secure Genomic Analysis Approaches (2025, Supervisor for UROP Intern)
Please note that ongoing theses are only visible from within the RWTH network. If you are not affiliated with RWTH Aachen University and you are interested in our topics, please contact us.