The highly anticipated launch of the University of Bath’s new Institute for Digital Security and Behaviour (IDSB) took place at the Grade I listed Guildhall in Bath on 29 January 2025, with a keynote speech from the Government Chief Scientific Adviser, Professor Dame Angela McLean. Professor Sarah Hainsworth OBE opened the launch. She said:

The University of Bath has world-leading researchers in our digital world and security, and I’m really pleased to see them brought under a single umbrella with the new institute. Our focus is on fundamental research, but it is applied, and it is outward looking with a strong focus on working with our external partners. We play a leading role in many key initiatives in digital security and behaviour, from digital security by design to the latest NetworkPlus – designed to bring the UK cybersecurity ecosystem into a single network – and being at the forefront of how AI can support policing and counter terrorism. The institute not only provides a way of bringing all of these new initiatives together but helps in the development of new and exciting collaborations across the disciplines to address the security challenges of our digital world both now and in the future.

Directors, Professor Laura Smith and Professor Adam Joinson both spoke on the critical importance of digital security and the work IDSB will be doing to navigate external challenges. Professor Smith said:

Today’s world is digital. It includes Artificial Intelligence, social media, cyber risks and threats. While new technologies provide incredible opportunities for growth, prosperity and innovation, they also create risks and threats. This is why it’s important to work with us. Not only does our institute embody what the University of Bath was designed to do, but it is a prime opportunity to rise to the pressing challenges and opportunities of today, in this digital age, and to make sure we are safe as we navigate those challenges.

The human and social challenges associated with these new technologies are often the most intractable. As an institute, we face these challenges head-on, to help people and organisations navigate this digital revolution. We take a whole of society approach, which places people at the heart of digital security. We want to develop the next generation of leaders in digital security and behaviour and to help advance ethe UK as a global leader in this domain.

Keynote speaker Professor Dame Angela McLean, the first woman to be appointed as Government Chief Scientific Advisor, said:

My job as government Chief Scientific Adviser can actually be said in just a few words. My mission is to make sure that excellent science advice sits at the heart of government decision making. It’s easy to say but not always easy to do.

We have had wonderful conversations today which ranged from talking about digital security, about the networks across which both the good things and bad things flow, which was tremendously interesting, and also about data sources. I’m very glad indeed that Professor Joinson and Professor Smith are bringing their skills and broad disciplinary approach to questions about digital security through the Institute for Digital Security and Behaviour.

Behavioural science is something we take extremely seriously in the Government Office for Science. There’s fundamentally no interesting problem in science that you can answer without addressing behavioural science too. You can make technology, but the great majority of technology is used by people. We need to understand how people are going to use technology in order that we can bring technology to bear on all the major issues we would like to address, and in ways that will be safe, will make people’s lives better, and will be acceptable to people.

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