INRS-UQO Joint Research Unit (UMR) Cybersecurity and Digital Trust

Zakaria Abou El Houda is an assistant professor at Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS), within the Energie Matériaux Telécommunications Centre. His research work encompasses the fields of network security and focuses, among other things, on artificial intelligence applied to cybersecurity, particularly to intrusion detection systems in critical networks (e.g. smart grids, the Internet of Things (IoT), industrial IoT), the study of the explainability and robustness of these systems, security in distributed/federated machine learning, and blockchain. He specializes in automation and security enhancement issues for next-generation networks (5G and beyond/6G). 

Publications : https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=rrLpEjoAAAAJ 

Zakaria Abou El Houda (INRS)

Dr. Anderson Avila is an assistant professor at the Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS), within the Energie  Matériaux Telécommunications Centre. His research focuses on areas such as federated learning for data protection, cyber defence, automatic processing of human languages, and biometrics. Dr. Avila obtained a bachelor’s degree in computer science from the Federal University of São Carlos, a master’s degree from the Federal University of ABC, and a doctorate from INRS. Prior to his current position, he worked as a researcher in natural language and speech processing, focusing on model compression, low latency, and robustness in spoken language understanding. 

Publications: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Q0hJ-hAAAAAJ&hl=en 

Anderson Ávila (INRS) 

Professor Bouchard’s research projects focus on the development of virtual reality environments to treat complex anxiety disorders and pathological gambling, conducting clinical trials on the effectiveness of in virtuo exposure for anxiety disorders and leading experimental studies to understand why virtual reality is an effective therapeutic tool for generating strong emotional experiences. This work involves cybersecurity and digital trust in several respects, from the risks posed by access to highly confidential information to the consequences of experiences in the metaverse. Telepsychotherapy is another prolific field of research, where he conducts clinical trials and studies of the mechanisms underlying the effectiveness of cognitive-behavioural psychotherapy applied via videoconference. Here again, the implications for cybersecurity and digital trust are important in guiding mental health professionals in the application of best cybersecurity practices. His research laboratory is home to Psyché, the only six-sided immersive vault dedicated to research in mental health and cybersecurity. He has received several awards and distinctions, including the Adrien Pinard prize in 2014 for his contribution to the field of psychology. 

Publications: https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=WigdrgwAAAAJ 

Stéphane Bouchard (UQO)

Alan Davoust is an associate professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at UQO. His research focuses mainly on the interaction of agents and/or people in computer systems. He is interested in distributed systems from a multi-agent perspective, particularly the interactions between people and automated agents, and the biases and issues of trust associated with these interactions. He is also interested in the ethical dimensions of artificial intelligence and socio-technical systems. 

Publications: https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=32SzsWcAAAAJ 

Alan Davoust (UQO) 

Tiago H. Falk is a full professor at Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS), within the Energie Matériaux Telécommunications Centre. He is an expert in secure and adaptive human-machine systems and is currently working on projects to detect synthetic media (including deepfakes) and on the compression of large AI models for edge applications, privacy in the metaverse, biometrics robust to adversarial attacks, and trustworthy human-AI teaming. He directs the Multisensory Signal Analysis and Enhancement Lab, with locations at both UQO (Gatineau) and INRS-EMT (Montréal). 

Publications: https://scholar.google.ca/citations?user=_i58BPYAAAAJ&hl=en  

Tiago H. Falk (INRS) 

Raphaël Khoury is a professor in the Computer Science and Engineering Department at Université du Québec en Outaouais (UQO). His research focuses on software security and best secure programming practices. He is the author of the book “Software Security: A Defensive Approach” and is the recipient of research grants from FQRNT and NSERC. 

Publications: https://scholar.google.ca/citations?user=bskziasAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao 

Raphaël Khoury (UQO)