Oksana Kulyk receives Villum Experiment grant for her research in election technologies

How may society successfully communicate security in election technologies? Assistant Professor in Computer Science at ITU, Oksana Kulyk, has just received a grant to the tune of 1.98 million kroner from the Villum Experiment-programme to answer that question.

Oksana KulykComputer Science Departmentethicsgrantsdemocracy

Written 14 September, 2021 05:46 by Theis Duelund Jensen

The research project that Oksana Kulyk has received almost two million kroner for is entitled Communicating trust in the security of election technologies and is aimed at developing methods to effectively communicate the security of election technologies and thus help to prevent disinformation efforts and increase confidence in electoral systems:

“Establishing and maintaining public trust in election integrity is already a challenge for many countries that is further exacerbated when information and communication technologies, such as cryptography-based electronic voting systems, are introduced in the electoral process,” says Oksana Kulyk who is also affiliated with the Center for Information Security and Trust at ITU.

“The lack of transparency, real or preserved, makes it difficult for the lay voters to be convinced that election integrity is guaranteed, which in turn can lead to a loss of public trust and be exploited by disinformation campaigns to destroy trust even further.  The experiments that we conduct under the umbrella of this Villum Experiment project will help us understand the complexities of how trust mechanisms work, how voters build trust in election technologies, and how to communicate trust effectively and transparently.”

The Villum Experiment Programme has been created for research projects in technical and natural sciences that challenge the norm and have the potential fundamentally to change the way we approach important subjects. The applicants are anonymous to the international assessors to increase the focus on the research ideas and to let the researchers think freely in relation to their previous track record. The programme was launched in 2017, and since its inception, 246 researchers have received a grant.

Out of 400 applicants, Oksana Kulyk’s research project is one of 51 recipients of the two-year grant.

Find more information about the Villum Experiment here. 

Further information