Research at the frontier of cyber, AI & the quantum era.
Professor Kai London is an Honorary Professor in Cybersecurity, AI & Quantum Computing and a Researcher at UCL. His work asks how organisations stay trustworthy as cryptography, machine intelligence, and autonomous systems outpace the rules written for them — pursuing post-quantum cryptography, AI governance and the EU AI Act, zero-trust for autonomous systems, and operational resilience. The questions are academic; the consequences are not.
The research agenda
Practice-informed scholarship on the technologies rewriting trust.
Professor Kai London holds an Honorary Professorship in Cybersecurity, AI & Quantum Computing and is a Researcher at UCL. His scholarship is grounded in practice: 25+ years as a CISO and senior security leader across Banking, Aviation, Defence, Government, and Critical National Infrastructure inform a research agenda concerned with how institutions remain accountable as cryptography, machine intelligence, and autonomy evolve faster than governance can follow.
Four themes anchor the work. Post-quantum cryptography and the migration path to quantum-safe assurance. AI governance and the operationalisation of the EU AI Act and ISO/IEC 42001. Zero-trust architecture extended to autonomous and machine-to-machine systems, drawing on NIST SP 800-207. And operational resilience under DORA, NIS2, and NIST CSF 2.0 — where regulation, engineering, and accountability converge.
The aim is research that does not stay on the page: findings translated into teaching, standards, and decisions that institutions can actually adopt. Kai also writes for a wider readership, with ten published books examining AI accountability, machine trust, and the security of emerging systems.
He welcomes invitations to lecture, deliver keynotes, examine doctoral work, contribute to programme committees, and offer expert comment to journalists and policymakers.
Credentials & standing
Scholarship anchored in deep professional accreditation.
A breadth of certification across information security, cloud, AI governance, and the EU regulatory landscape — the technical grounding behind research that engages real systems and live regulation.
Research themes
The questions the work pursues.
Five lines of enquiry where cryptography, machine intelligence, and autonomy meet governance, standards, and accountability — each open to collaboration, supervision, and invited talks.
Post-Quantum Cryptography
Migration to quantum-safe assurance: crypto-agility, the road to NIST-selected algorithms, and what "harvest-now, decrypt-later" means for long-lived data.
AI Governance & the EU AI Act
Operationalising the EU AI Act and ISO/IEC 42001 — turning principles for high-risk AI into auditable controls, oversight, and assurance.
Zero Trust for Autonomous Systems
Extending NIST SP 800-207 to machine-to-machine and autonomous agents, where identity, intent, and trust must be continuously verified.
Operational Resilience
How DORA, NIS2, and NIST CSF 2.0 reshape resilience — and where regulation, engineering, and institutional accountability genuinely converge.
Quantum & Emerging Risk
The security implications of quantum computing and other frontier technologies for the systems institutions will depend on next.
Public Scholarship & Writing
Translating research into books, lectures, and commentary that reach students, practitioners, policymakers, and the wider public.
The hard problem is not building the next technology — it is keeping our institutions trustworthy as cryptography, intelligence, and autonomy outpace the rules we wrote for them. That gap is where my research lives.
Academic & professional standing
Where the research is grounded.
An honorary professorship and an active research base at UCL, set on more than two decades of senior practice in the field.
Get in touch
Invite a lecture, keynote, or collaboration.
For guest lectures, conference keynotes, doctoral examination, research collaboration, or expert comment, the best place to reach Professor London is LinkedIn.