Erik van der Kouwe is an assistant professor co-leading the VUSec systems security group at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam together with Herbert Bos and Cristiano Giuffrida. He received his PhD in software reliability from prof. Andy Tanenbaum, and afterwards broadened hist scope to include systems security. His recent work is on practical compiler-assisted defenses against zero-day vulnerabilities and on properly benchmarking such defenses.