Kate Labunets is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Information and Computing Sciences at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. Before joining Utrecht University, she was a cyber security postdoc for the VSNU Digital Society track on Safety and Security and H2020 CYBECO projects at the Delft University of Technology. Kate holds a PhD in Information and Communication Technology from the University of Trento (Italy) and a Master in Mathematics from Belarussian State University (Minsk, Belarus).

As a researcher, she is passionate about using empirical methods to solve problems in the intersection of cyber security and human factors fields. During her PhD, Kate studied the effectiveness of existing security methods and whether current security methods are worthy of being adopted. The main goal behind these studies was to help practitioners save time and money in selecting the most appropriate security method among dozens of existing approaches.

As a supervisor, Kate enjoys bringing out the best in my students and junior colleagues and helping them discover where their strengths lie.