people

Faculty and Research Staff

Jose Such, Head

Prof Jose Such is Research Professor at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), where he leads the Human-centred AI Security, Ethics and Privacy (HASP) Lab at the INGENIO (CSIC-UPV) research institute. Previously, he was Full Professor of Computer Science at King’s College London in the UK from 2021 to 2025 and Full Professor (part-time) at Universitat Politecnica de Valencia from 2023 to 2025. At King’s, he was the founder and Director (2018-2025) of the King’s Cybersecurity Centre, an Academic Centre of Excellence in Cyber Security Research (ACE-CSR) recognised by NCSC and EPSRC. Before this, he was also Reader (2018-2021) and Senior Lecturer (2016-2018) at King’s College London, Lecturer (2012-2016) at Lancaster University, and he completed a PhD at Universitat Politecnica de Valencia in 2011. His research interests are at the intersection between Artificial Intelligence, Human-Computer Interaction, and Cyber Security, having published in the top venues in these fields (IJCAI, AAAI, ICML, AAMAS, EMNLP, CHI, CSCW, IEEE S&P, Usenix Security, PETS, SOUPS). Jose is Associate Editor of IEEE Security & Privacy, and his research has been funded through a multi-million pound portfolio of projects by UKRI, EPSRC, ICO, UK Government, Google, InnovateUK, INCIBE, AEI and GVA.

Gonzalo Gabriel Méndez

Dr Gonzalo Gabriel Méndez works at the intersection of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Information Visualization. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of St Andrews, Scotland, where he focused on constructive tools for authoring data visualizations. He later completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Calgary, Canada. Gonzalo’s current research explores the human aspects of AI-based technologies, aiming to leverage visual representations to create interfaces that help users control their privacy in the age of AI.

Xiao Zhan

Dr Xiao Zhan is a postdoctoral researcher working on addressing safety, security and privacy concerns in LLMs and multimodal LLMs. She obtained her PhD by examining the dynamics of privacy norms and trust in the context of AI assistants.

Caterina Maidhof

Dr Caterina Maidhof is interested in how humans make privacy and security trade-offs when interacting with potentially sensitive and safety-critical data and technology. She has a background in communication and psychology. She completed a PhD at the RWTH Aachen University, Germany, where she investigated privacy perceptions and technology acceptance among different users of video-based assistive technologies.

Hana Kopecka

Dr Hana Kopecka is interested in the intersection of artificial intelligence and sociology. Her PhD focused on the interaction between AI systems and users. In particular, she is interested in exploring how different communities interact with AI systems and how could this inform the design of more understandable AI explanations.

Rongjun Ma

Dr. Rongjun Ma is a researcher in usable security and privacy in everyday interactions with AI systems. With a background in HCI, she studies how people interpret, adapt to, and reshape emerging technologies in practice. Her work examines how AI systems are appropriated across contexts, how they reconfigure user roles and agency, and how design can better support secure and privacy-aware use. She completed her PhD at Aalto University, where her dissertation investigated everyday technology appropriation and its design implications.

PhD Students

Ina Kaleva

Ina Kaleva is PhD student at King’s College London, where she explores users’ views on and experiences with generative AI tools by specific user groups, including women’s use of GenAI for femhealth and general use of GenAI by children and adolescents. She holds an MSc degree in Mental Health Studies at King’s College London and has a background in digital mental health.

Juan Carlos Carrillo

As a PhD candidate at Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, Juan Carlos specializes in the trustworthiness and privacy of Large Language Models (LLMs). His academic career includes a significant project during his master’s degree in cybersecurity and cyberintelligence, where he developed a system to analyze echo chambers among Spanish congress members on Twitter. His current research is dedicated to advancing the security and privacy features of LLMs. </a>

Chenkai Ma

Chenkai Ma is a PhD student in the Department of Informatics at King’s College London (KCL). He obtained his MSc in Advanced Computing also from KCL. He worked as a software engineer at Huawei before starting his PhD. His research focuses on the intersection of security, privacy, safety, human-computer interaction (HCI), and mobile apps.

Shijing He

Shijing He is a Ph.D. student in Computer Science at King’s College London (KCL), affiliated with the Cybersecurity Group in the Department of Informatics. He is working at the intersection of Usable security and privacy, HCI, Technical and Non-technical privacy interventions, and User experience design. </a>

Diego Paracuellos

Diego Paracuellos de los Santos is a Ph.D. candidate with an academic background in telecommunications, electronics, and cybersecurity. His research aims toward the advancement of “privacy as default” systems in machine-human/machine interactions.