Denis Donadel

Postdoc in Cybersecurity

University of Verona, Italy

whoami

Ciao! I’m Denis! I’m a postdoc at the University of Verona 🇮🇹, working on cybersecurity of cyber-physical systems under the supervision of Prof. Massimo Merro. I got my PhD in Brain, Mind and Computer Science (BMCS) from the University of Padua 🇮🇹 in 2024, where I was part of the SPRITZ Security and Privacy Research Group under the supervision of Prof. Mauro Conti, with a thesis on automotive security. During the 2021 Summer I was granted the New Generation Internet (NGI) Explorers 🇪🇺 grant to support a collaboration with the University of Washington (Seattle, USA 🇺🇸), which I visited for some months in 2023, under the supervision of Prof. Radha Poovendran. In 2026, I was awarded the MSCA-PF Seal Of Excellence 🇪🇺.

Interests

Cyber-Physical Systems Security
Automotive Security
Electric Vehicle Security
Social Robots Security
Industrial Control Systems Security
AI Applications to Cybersecurity

Education

PhD in Brain, Mind, and Computer Science, 2024
University of Padua, Italy
MSc in ICT for Internet and Multimedia, 2020
University of Padua, Italy
BSc in Information Engineering, 2018
University of Padua, Italy

News

Talk on Securing Modern Vehicles at Örebro University 🇸🇪

Örebro University Apr 2026

I had the pleasure of giving a talk on the security of Modern Vehicles at the AI, Robotics and Cybersecurity Center (ARC) in Örebro. Thanks for having me!

MSCA-PF Seal of Excellence 🇪🇺

European Union Mar 2026

My Marie Sklodowska Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship proposal was awarded with the MSCA-PF Seal of Excellence for the 2026 call!

Awesome Industrial Malware 🐛🏭

Github Jan 2026

Checkout and contribute to the collection of Industrial Malware from the while in the awesome-ics-malware GitHub page!

Best Paper Award 🏆

CPSS Workshop Aug 2025

Our Paper SimProcess: High Fidelity Simulation of Noisy ICS Physical Processes won the Best Paper Award at the 11th ACM Cyber-Physical System Security Workshop in Hanoi 🇻🇳!

Publications

Towards a Secure Network Architecture for Social Robots

Denis Donadel, Matteo Soldà, Mauro Conti, Massimo Merro

SimProcess: High Fidelity Simulation of Noisy ICS Physical Processes

Denis Donadel, Gabriele Crestanello, Giulio Morandini, Daniele Antonioli, Mauro Conti, Massimo Merro

A Comparative Study of ICS Honeypot Deployments

Frederik Ondrikov, Denis Donadel, Francesco Lupia, Daniel Dos Santos, Massimo Merro, Emmanuele Zambon, Nicola Zannone

Can LLMs Classify CVEs? Investigating LLMs Capabilities in Computing CVSS Vectors

Francesco Marchiori, Denis Donadel, Mauro Conti

CANLP: NLP-Based Intrusion Detection System for CAN

Kavya Balasubramanian, Adithya Gowda Baragur, Denis Donadel, Dinuka Sahabandu, Alessandro Brighente, Bhaskar Ramasubramanian, Mauro Conti, Radha Poovendran

See all publications

Experience

Postdoctoral Researcher

University of Verona

Nov 2024 – Present Verona, Italy 🇮🇹

Conducting security researches on cyber-physical systems, with a focus on industrial control system security, under the supervision of Prof. Massimo Merro.

Visiting Researcher

University of Washington

Jun 2023 – Oct 2023 Seattle, USA 🇺🇸

Development of security solutions for CAN Bus in-vehicle networks employing ECU’s activations and NLP-like techniques, under the supervision of Prof. Radha Poovendran.

Security Engineer Apprenticeship

Omitech SRL

Oct 2021 – Oct 2024 Padova, Italy 🇮🇹

Responsibilities includes:

Development of security solutions for a Managed Service Provider and for social robots.
Providing security awareness courses to employees.
Conducting offensive security campaigns (e.g., penetration testing, phishing simulations)
Implementation of defense solutions (e.g., SIEM, intrusion detection)
Developing LLM-based applications

New Generation Internet (NGI) Explorer - Fellow

University of Washington (Virtual due to COVID)

Aug 2021 – Oct 2021 Seattle, USA 🇺🇸

Visiting period founded by the European’s Horizon 2020 program to develop a countermeasure against relay attacks in the Electric Vehicle Charging environment.

Predoctoral Research Fellow at SPRITZ - Security and Privacy Research Group

University of Padua

Feb 2021 – Sep 2021 Padova, Italy 🇮🇹

Research on Electric Vehicle and Cyber-Physical System Security.

Freelancer

Jan 2021 – Jan 2013 Italy 🇮🇹

Web designer / Webmaster / Graphic Designer / Photographer / Videomaker

Research Internship at SPRITZ - Security and Privacy Research Group

University of Padua

Jul 2020 – Oct 2020 Padova, Italy 🇮🇹

Research on Industrial Control System testbeds and datasets suited for cybersecurity research