Michael Backes (born January 7, 1978) is a German professor of Computer Science. He is the founding director and CEO of the CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security.

Born in Germany he received a Diploma Degree in Computer Science and a Diploma Degree in Mathematics from Saarland University in 2001 and 2002, respectively, and obtained his PhD in Computer Science from Saarland University in 2002 under the supervision of Birgit Pfitzmann and Harald Ganzinger.

He was a successively Researcher at IBM Research (2002 – 2005) and Associate Professor (2005) and Professor (2006 – today) of Computer Science at Saarland University, Germany.

He is the founding director and CEO of the newly funded CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security, Germany, since 2018.

His research is concerned with information security and privacy, particularly on security and privacy in machine learning, trustworthy information processing and medical privacy; design, analysis and verification for security-critical systems and services, and universal solutions in software and network security.

Backes has received a number of awards, including the following:

2018: Honorary Doctorate degree of the University of Lorraine

2018: Fellow of the IEEE

2017: NSA Cybersecurity Research Award

2017: CNIL-INRIA Privacy Award

2015: Member of the German Academy of Science and Engineering

2014: ERC Synergy Grant

2009: ERC Starting Grant

2008: MIT TR35

2008: IBM Faculty Award

2007: Fellow of the Max Planck Society

2005: IBM Outstanding Achievement Award

2004: Caspar Bowden Award 2004

Michael Backes Personal Page at CISPA