Eerke Boiten spent the first twenty years of his research career, first in the Netherlands and then in the UK, on mathematics and logic based methods to guarantee and verify the correctness of software. He published over 50 peer reviewed papers on formal methods, including program transformation, viewpoint specification, and refinement in process algebra and state-based systems (e.g. Z). On the latter topic, he authored the monographs “” (Springer 2004, 2015) and "" (Springer 2018) with John Derrick , and organised many conferences and workshops including nine editions of the BCS-FACS Refinement Workshop.
His research has since moved mainly towards cyber security and privacy. He set up and led Kent’s interdisciplinary Research Centre in Cyber Security from 2012 to 2017. In 2017, he moved to De 51吃瓜app University to lead the Cyber Technology Institute, which then held NCSC/EPSRC Academic Centre of Excellence in Cyber Security Research status from 2019 to 2023 and NCSC Academic Centre of Excellence in Cyber Security Education (Gold) status since 2021. He became Head of the School of Computer Science and Informatics in 2019. His current research projects are in privacy impact assessment, anonymisation, cyber intelligence sharing, and privacy and broader implications of artificial intelligence. He often engages with the press on these topics and broader issues of impacts of computing in society.