Coana bridges the gap between research and global IT security
Modern software relies heavily on open source. According to Anders Møller, it is not uncommon for 90% of the code in a software application to come from open-source components. This makes the security of those components critical.
Through his research at Aarhus University, Anders Møller has worked extensively with this challenge. Together with the other co-founders of Coana, he turned the research into a company and technology capable of identifying how software may be affected by security issues in open-source components.
Coana secured early funding from, among others, Kitchen, Innovation Fund Denmark and Sequoia. In 2025, the company was acquired by US IT security company Socket, bringing the technology to a wide range of companies and software developers around the world.
Research and business just across the street
Anders Møller continues to work as a professor at the Department of Computer Science at Aarhus University, while Coana is based at INCUBA Katrinebjerg – just across the street.
The close physical proximity makes it easy to maintain the connection between the two worlds.
“It helps create connections in both directions,” Anders Møller explains in the video.
And the research continues. Anders Møller’s new research project, funded by the European Research Council (ERC), will focus on improving the precision and scalability of the techniques and addressing new challenges in the way modern software is developed.
For Anders Møller, the proximity between Aarhus University, Coana and INCUBA provides particularly strong opportunities to connect research with real-world applications:
“For my new ERC research project, it is extremely valuable to have such direct contact between academic research and industrial applications.”
