A national research and education network. A research cloud built on open-source infrastructure. A university of 30,000 students recovering from ransomware. Behind scientific discovery sits a large and often open digital estate, and the five cyber leaders below are responsible for protecting it in Switzerland, Finland, Germany, Czechia, and Spain. Some run security directly, others lead technology portfolios with security at their core, and three have been researchers themselves.
Ronny Peterhans – CIO, University of Zurich
Ronny Peterhans has come back to the university where he earned his master’s in computer science. Since September 2026 he has been CIO and head of Central IT at the University of Zurich, leading an IT organization of around 250 people whose remit includes IT security, alongside a Cyber Defence Center and Science IT within the Central IT structure. He arrived from more than ten years at the Paul Scherrer Institute, part of the ETH Domain, where he moved from IT portfolio manager to head of IT operations, interim section head of Science IT, and finally head of the IT department, leading IT strategy, digital transformation, governance, and cybersecurity. Earlier in his career he worked as an IT architect and IT security officer for the Canton of Aargau’s IT strategy office, after starting out as an application developer in 1999. He also holds an Executive MBA in strategic management and is a certified professional business negotiator.
Antti Savolainen – Head of Security, CSC – IT Center for Science
For nearly 16 years, Antti Savolainen ran information security for Finland’s Ministry for Foreign Affairs as its CISO, owning its information security management system, risk management, incident management, and awareness. Since September 2024 he has been head of security at CSC – IT Center for Science, the organization behind much of Finland’s shared research computing. In June 2025, CSC announced a set of security certifications whose ISO 27001 scope covered its computing platforms, the hosting of the LUMI supercomputer, research cloud services, data center operations, and the Funet research and education network, with Savolainen discussing NIS2 obligations and extending information security assurance across its services. His career has ranged widely, from leading infantry training as a Finnish Defence Forces platoon leader to security roles at Nordea, SAS, and game developer Remedy Entertainment. He also co-founded the security consultancy Halwick and served on the board of Women4Cyber Finland.
Maximilian Hoecker – Technical Director & CISO, Heidelberg University
Dr. Maximilian Hoecker wears two hats at Heidelberg University. As technical director of the University Computing Centre since 2020, he is responsible for planning and running its IT infrastructure and services, including cloud solutions and data analytics, core technologies and collaboration services, and all of the centre’s IT security services. As CISO, he works with the university’s CIO to plan, implement, and monitor its information security strategy, advising the rectorate and building an information security management system. His reach extends beyond Heidelberg: he sits on the steering committee of bwInfoSec, the information security federation for universities and other higher education institutions in Baden-Württemberg, whose core team is based at his computing centre. He came to the role from research, working on cloud computing as a research scientist at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and Heidelberg, after nearly five years as a working student at SAP.
Michael Bátrla – CISO, Czech Technical University in Prague
“Building the CTU’s first cybersecurity team – reach out if you’d like to be part of it.” That is how Michael Bátrla describes his job at Czech Technical University in Prague, where he became CISO in March 2026, heading its cybersecurity department and chairing its cybersecurity management committee. He brings an unusual mix of research and practice. As a visiting researcher at NATO’s Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence, he took part in the Locked Shields 2019 exercise and co-authored a framework for protecting armed forces from digital information threats, published with NATO StratCom COE. For nearly six years he has been a research fellow at Masaryk University’s Institute of Law and Technology, including research on the ransomware ecosystem. In between, he worked on cybersecurity strategy at the Czech Ministry of Defence, contributed to the European space sector and an IEEE space systems cybersecurity standard, and led security and AI governance at AI startups Rossum and Aisle.
Gonçal Badenes – CIO, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
Before running technology for a university of more than 30,000 students and 6,000 staff, Gonçal Badenes developed semiconductor technology. A physicist by training, he managed advanced CMOS process integration at IMEC in Belgium, then spent 16 years at the photonics institute ICFO as both chief scientist of its nanofabrication lab and its CIO, running an environment that included a high-performance computing cluster. Since 2018 he has been CIO at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, where his responsibilities span central technology infrastructure, the communications network, corporate systems, computer security, user support, and the virtual campus. UAB was hit by ransomware in 2021, and he has since shared lessons from the recovery in an interview published by Dell. In 2025 his department set a challenge at the UAB THE HACK! hackathon on improving the campus wifi network, and he described the university’s technology infrastructure as comparable in scale only to that of large companies.
Researchers Protecting Research
Hoecker came up through cloud computing research, Badenes through physics and semiconductor development, and Bátrla still holds a research fellowship alongside his CISO role. With Peterhans’s years at a national research institute and Savolainen’s role at Finland’s research computing center, all five know firsthand what scientific work needs from the systems they protect.
Discover more CISOs securing their organizations:
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- North America’s Cyber Leaders With a Wider Mandate
- Security That Makes Sense: The UK Cyber Leaders Putting People First
- Beyond Awareness: The Nordic CISOs Making Secure Behavior Part of Everyday Work
- Going the Distance: The Marathon-Running CISOs to Watch
- Beyond the Office Network: Australia’s Operational Cyber Leaders to Watch
John Kevin Hao is a news and feature writer covering cybersecurity, technology, and business targeted for professional audiences.