Centre for Advanced Security, Privacy, and Information Systems Research (ASPIRe)

Stephen W. Neville, PhD (Victoria), PEng (BC), Faculty of Engineering, Director

The ASPIRe Centre was formally established in 2011 within the Faculty of Engineering with support from the Government of the Province of British Columbia. ASPIRe focuses on advancing research and understanding with the three core inter-related domains of cyber-security, information privacy, and the underlying information systems that have become intrinsic to modern societies.

ASPIRe has a strong focus on facilitating and being a catalyst for research collaborations within the university in these areas and with external industry, government, and academic partners regionally, nationally, and internationally. ASPIRe also serves as a focal point for the research already underway at the university in these areas. ASPIRe members are involved in numerous industry, government, and academic research projects including in: network engineering, cryptography and cryptanalysis, distributed/cloud systems, health information systems, wireless networks, the semantic web, malware analysis and classification, social networking, mobile devices and applications, etc. ASPIRe is associated with NSERC’s national cyber-security focused strategic network - the Interconnected Systems Security Network (ISSNet) and UVic’s recently established Entrepreneurial Engineering Masters Projects (EEMP) conducted in partnership with the Alacrity Foundation.

ASPIRe is open to and welcoming of extending its collaborations across the wider university community as the ASPIRe membership fully realize that developing solutions in these pressing domains will require active collaborative efforts between technically and non-technically focused researchers, i.e., across engineering and science, business, law, psychology, political science, economics, etc., as well as active collaborations with its industry and government partners. ASPIRe members have research project support through NSERC, CFI, BC KDF, MITACS, etc.