Educational and work profile (Geir M. Køien)

1985 – 1990

I studied information technology at Oslo College of Engineering back in 1985 – 1988.

Then I supplemented this with a Computing Science degree from University of Newcastle upon Tyne, England (1988 – 1990).

This degree was then recognized by NTH, Trondheim, Norway, and became a Sivil Ingeniør (the title isn’t awarded anymore, but it’s roughly equivalent to an MSc.).

 

1990 – 1995

I have worked in the industry for many years, including for Ericsson Norway, System Sikkerhet AS, Telenor Kompetanse and Telenor R&D.

At Ericsson (1991 – 1993) I worked as a system tester. What we tested was system software for ISDN and NMT exchanges.

At System Sikkerhet AS (1993 – 1995) I worked mainly with evaluation of UNIX based military software for an email exchange server.

This was classical UNIX System V software and classical Orange Book evaluation (well, we did have an extended set of criteria…).

1995 – 2002

 

Then I moved on to Telenor Kompetanse (1995 – 1998), which was a Telenor internal unit for system courses.

My primary task was to teach system signaling and system architecture. This even included a little bit of NMT 450/900, but the main focus was on the GSM system.

In 1998 Telenor establish a local branch office of Telenor R&D in Grimstad, and I was there from day one. My work now shifted from teaching GSM to technical evaluation of GPRS.

From 1999 my primary focus was on UMTS and access security, and I was the Telenor delegate to the (3GPP) SA3 work group (security) from 1999 to 2009.

During the last few years the main focus was of course not with UMTS anymore, but rather with the emerging LTE system (which is the 4G initiative from 3GPP*).

2002 – 2008

In 2002 I started my PhD studies while working for Telenor R&D.

Formally, my PhD studies were conducted at Aalborg University (AAU), Denmark, but in reality I was doing the work at the University of Agder (UiA), Norway.

The reason for this was that UiA, at the time, wasn’t a university. But UiA did have an agreement with AAU, and so I had one supervisor at AAU (prof. Ramjee Prasad) and one at UiA (prof. Vladimir Oleshchuk).

Nice arrangement for me. Anyway, I finished my PhD in April 2008 in Aalborg and the topic was access security and personal privacy in future cellular/mobile systems.

2008 – 2009

Now, by the time I had completed my PhD the local Telenor R&D branch office had closed down.

I didn’t want to be relocated to Oslo (Norway) so I made an agreement with Telenor R&D (which, btw, was now called Telenor R&I).

The agreement included me quitting my job voluntarily and Telenor R&D hiring me back as a (self employed) consultant.

So from mid 2008 and until end of 2009 I have been working for Telenor R&D as a contract consultant, but this arrangement wasn’t meant to last forever.

Therefore I applied for a Postdoc position at UiA and from Decemeber 2009 I have been working for UiA.

(apart from doing my PhD studies here at UiA and have also had an office and a 20% assoc. prof. position here at UiA since 2008 so I’m not at all new to this place)

2009 – 20xx

Now I am a postdoctor at University of Agder, Grimstad, Norway.

 

 

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* LTE isn’t formally a 4G system; it’s more like a 3.9G system. It will become a 4G system with LTE-Advanced.

However, the security architecture isn’t really affected by this and so plain vanilla LTE already has the “4G” security architecture in place.

 

 

Last updated: 01.12.2009