Meet the team
Professor Emma Barrett
SPRITE+ Director (University of Manchester)
Before joining UoM in March 2018, Emma was Research to Practice Fellow at the Centre for Research and Evidence on Security Threats (CREST) at Lancaster University, leading efforts to ensure that CREST’s research activities focused on end user requirements and fostering strong links between academics and stakeholders. From 2003-2015, she led a UK Government research unit of 25 specialist staff and contractors that developed and applied behavioural, psychological, and social science research to a range of security and defence issues. She was awarded the OBE in 2010.
Emma is a Chartered Psychologist. She completed her doctorate in Psychology at the University of Birmingham and holds a MSc in Investigative Psychology, a Conversion Diploma in Psychology, and a BSc in Anthropology. She is the co-author of Extreme: Why some people thrive at the limits (Oxford University Press, 2014), and a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.
Professor Deeph Chana
SPRITE+ Co-Director (Imperial College London)
Prof Chana has extensive experience of leading STEM programmes and initiatives in academia, industry and government (the ‘triple helix’). He is currently the Co-Director of the Institute for Security Science Technology at Imperial College, London and the founder and Director of a technology development consultancy specialising in critical-infrastructure and smartcity applications. Amongst other active projects, he is the co-founder of the UK-Government funded Research Institute in Trustworthy Industrial Control Systems on cyber-security at Imperial and leads a collaboration on the security of cyber-physical systems in critical infrastructure with investigators in Singapore. Prof Chana is currently involved in several successful commercial technology projects in the SME sector.
In a previous role Prof Chana worked as a senior technology-policy official in the UK government where he led the delivery of the Department for Transport’s security and resilience technology mission; overseeing a wide-ranging STEM research and development portfolio; setting currently active national-security government policy and leading numerous STEM diplomacy engagements for the UK. He delivered critical policy advice to four Secretaries of State – covering incidents including the 2005 London Tube bombings and the liquid explosives aviation plot of 2006 – and served as chairman on key national and international security technology policy working groups and committees.
Prof Chana holds MSci and PhD degrees in Physics from King’s College London.
Professor Stacey Conchie
SPRITE+ Co-Director (Lancaster University)
Stacey has worked with a number of industry and government partners to understand the impact of trust on safety- and security- related behaviours. Using field and experimental methods, she has helped agencies understand the role of trust in leader-follower exchange, the changing nature of trust following micro and macro interventions, the measurement of trust using implicit and explicit methods, both offline and online, and the impact of distrust on team performance and how this may be addressed.
Stacey is a Chartered Psychologist, a member of the UK’s Centre for Research and Evidence on Security Threats, and an incoming board member (as communications director) of the First International Network of Trust.
Professor Sakir Sezer
SPRITE+ Co-Director (Queen’s University Belfast)
Professor Vladimiro Sassone
SPRITE+ Co-Director (University of Southampton)
Vladimiro’s research expertise is on cyber security, including social and human factors, cyber-crime, data privacy (anonymity and anonymisation), internet-of-things, trust, provenance, blockchain, internet computing, foundations of computation. He has authored about 250 publications, reaching an h-index of 37 and around 3800 citations (source PoP). Since 2014, he has secured in excess of £3.8m in research funds. Vladimiro has developed large networks of collaborators in academia, industry and government, including The Cabinet Office, FCO, DBEIS, NCA, ICO, NAO, FCA and Bank of England, and worked with governments internationally, Italy, Malta and West Bengal, and nationally, NCSC/GCHQ, DSTL, the Regional Organised Crime Units and Hampshire Police. He is Chief Scientific Officer at the Italian Ministry of Economy and Finances.
Professor Mark Elliot
SPRITE+ Expert Fellows Co-ordinator (University of Manchester)
He is one of the key international researchers in the field of Statistical Disclosure and collaborates widely with non-academic partners, particularly with national statistical agencies where he has been a key influence on disclosure control methodology used in censuses and surveys and where the SUDA software that he developed in collaboration with colleagues in Computer Science at Manchester is used. In 2012, he has led the UK Anonymisation Network, which has 600 members and provides advice, consultancy and training on anonymisation.
Aside from Confidentiality, Privacy and Disclosure, his research interests include Data Science Methodology and its application to social science. He is director of the University’s new interdisciplinary MSc in Data Science and the doctoral programme in Data analytics and society.

Katy Taylor
SPRITE+ Events, Projects and Communications Assistant (University of Manchester)
Katy completed her undergraduate degree in Film Studies and English Literature at the University of Manchester in 2021. Before she graduated, she worked as a Senior Designer at the University’s national-award winning student newspaper The Mancunion, whilst also being involved in creative writing programmes within the University. Her work in Creative Writing was showcased at the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures department-wide celebration for the graduating class of 2021.
After graduating during the pandemic, Katy had a six-month gap period where she worked full-time in Hospitality before re-joining the University of Manchester as an Events, Projects and Communications Assistant here at SPRITE+ in January 2022.