Prof. Phil Legg is a Full Professor of Cyber Security at the
University of the West of England (UWE Bristol), UK, in recognition of “Advancing Teaching and Learning” (Primary domain) and for “Research with Impact” (Secondary domain). He is Co-Director of the
UWEcyber Academic Centre of Excellence in Cyber Security Education (ACE-CSE), as recognised by the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC). He was Programme Leader for the NCSC-certified
MSc Cyber Security at UWE since it launched in 2018, handing this role over in September 2024. As of 2024, he became part of the Programme Leadership team for the
BSc Cyber Security and Digital Forensics programme. He also serves as the Cyber Security research theme leader for the
Computer Science Research Centre (CSRC).
His research intersects across Cyber Security, looking at how machine learning, visual analytics, and human-computer interaction are adopted within cyber security, to improve interpretability and understanding of risk, and to improve robustness and trust of modern security technologies. His early research addresses the robustness of machine learning and computer vision systems, as well as how such models can be utilised for insider threat detection and cyber situational awareness. He has also worked on developing mitigations against adversarial machine learning techniques, as well as investigation container-based security vulnerabilities. More recently, he is interested in how human-machine teaming can help to establish confidence and trust in human-machine agents, and how active learning techniques can be used to interrogate model robustness and identify security vulnerabilities such as adversarial learning cases. Further details on the
Cyber Security research theme is available here.
He holds a Postgraduate Certificate in Teaching and Learning for Higher Education (Distinction), and is a Fellow of the
Higher Education Academy(FHEA). He is a professional member of the IEEE and the BCS. He holds CompTIA certifications
SecurityX (formerly CASP+),
PenTest+, and
Security+, as well as Microsoft Azure, Security, Data, and AI certifications (
AZ-900,
SC-900,
DP-900,
AI-900), and is a certified instructor for Palo Alto Networks. He is recognised as a Full Member of the
Chartered Institute of Information Security(MCIIS), as well as a member of the
Council of Professors and Heads of Computing (CPHC).
He began his academic career at
Cardiff University, where he completed his BSc Computer Science (2006), and went on to study for a PhD in Computer Science (2010), whilst also working as an academic support tutor (2006-2010) and as a post-doctoral researcher (2010). He has also held post-doctoral research and teaching roles at
Swansea University(2010-2013) and the
University of Oxford (2013-2015), working with a variety of stakeholders across both industry and government. He joined UWE Bristol in 2015 as a Senior Lecturer in Computer Science, and was appointed as Associate Professor of Cyber Security in October 2018, and most recently, Full Professor of Cyber Security in January 2022
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