A Definitely Unusual Start: Giuseppe Raffa

We made it! The COVID-19 crisis has undoubtedly created a rather challenging environment for my cohort, as we did not have the opportunity to start our PhD journey in a traditional way. I must say that initially I was rather perplexed, as I thought that the lack of face-to-face interaction with lecturers and fellow students would have a negative impact on our learning experience. What happened over the last six months proves that I was certainly too pessimistic, and the spirit of co-operation of the 2020 cohort was the real winner.

The taught element of the CDT was a pleasant surprise for me. We all knew that our training would be interdisciplinary, but I suspect that very few of us, including me, had imagined that it would be so engaging, despite the circumstances created by the global pandemic. If I were asked to choose the highlights of the first term, I would mention the geopolitics course, where interaction is to my mind the key to success. I have always read about politics and international relations, which I see as an important background to many things that happen in the information security world, but the geopolitics lectures brought this to a different level. The second personal highlight was the group project, which explored contact tracing apps from a socio-technical and legal point of view. While I value what I learned about this important subject, co-operating with my cohort in a way that I had never experienced before was for me the most important outcome.

The presentation skills training and the white paper, which we completed at the beginning of March, were at the centre of our attention during the second term. After the first very intense workshop in January, I realized that delivering bad presentations is incredibly easy! The discussed examples made me think a lot about my style and I think that I am now much more aware of the possible pitfalls. In my experience, when working in a typical corporate environment, where people are frequently under pressure, delivering high-quality presentations is indeed a challenge. I am confident that this activity will guide us in the future and reshape the way we communicate in public.

My cohort has already been briefed on the summer project, which will now be our main focus as we transition from the taught element of the CDT programme to the beginning of our research. We are all aware that this is an important opportunity to start learning about either the topics we would like to explore during our PhD or a completely different area. At the moment, I have a very general, high-level idea of what I intend to work on. Having the experience of the Information Security MSc thesis though, I have no doubt that I will get all the support that I need to develop my ideas, however vague they might be now!

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