Dr. Seppo Virtanen is Professor and Chair of Cyber Security Engineering, and Vice Head of Department of Computing at the University of Turku, Finland. He received his MSc in applied physics (electronics and information technology) in 1998 and his PhD [DSc(Tech)] in Communication Systems in 2004 from the University of Turku. In 2009, he was awarded the title of adjunct professor (dosentti) in Embedded Communication Systems. He completed his certificate in university pedagogy in 2010 and became a holder of the government decree regulated teacher's competence and qualification. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE. He has supervised or examined 12 PhD theses and more than 160 Master’s theses. He has taught more than 80 instances of more than 25 different university courses to engineering students as principal instructor. His current research interests are on the application of AI on cyber security, technologies for network security solutions and security technologies for IoT.

Our research in cyber security engineering covers all abstraction levels and key application domains of networked systems from IoT to global internetworking, targeting future technologies needed  in building a secure digital society. Please visit our research group's website at https://www.utu.fi/cyber for more details.

Our research team is continuously interested in talented new doctoral researchers that wish to carry out their PhD thesis research with us. If your PhD research interests align with our on-going research activities, please contact us by completing and submitting our PhD thesis research contact form (rather than sending email). 

Our lab has the main educational responsibility in two Master’s degree programme major subjects in Cyber Security. Our annual output is about 30-40 M.Sc.(Tech.) degrees (120 ECTS) and we are the only university in Finland approved to the EIT Digital Master School Cyber Security double degree programme with other leading European universities in the field. Along with our partners, we also became a partner in the EU project called SPECTRO to deliver advanced digital skills in cyber security and robotics in the form of specialized Master’s programmes and self-standing modules. Please visit our research group's website at https://www.utu.fi/cyber for more details.