Pien Rooijendijk

PhD Candidate

Radboud University



About Me

Hey hey! I'm Pien, a PhD candidate at Radboud University, where I'm working on the project Explainable AI for Software Vulnerabilities. My research sits at the intersection of Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity, and Software Engineering. Software vulnerabilities pose a huge challenge to digital security, and while AI can help detect them, many current models act like black boxes. My work focuses on making these AI systems more transparent, interpretable, and trustworthy, so that developers and security analysts not only get accurate results, but also understand why a piece of code is flagged as vulnerable.

As part of my PhD, I explore topics such as:

  • Interpretable AI models that provide explanations accessible to anyone.
  • Evaluation frameworks to measure the quality and usefulness of AI explanations.
The ultimate goal of my research is to make AI-driven vulnerability detection more reliable and usable, empowering security teams to build safer software systems.