TRUSTEE evaluates how Trusted Research Environments (TREs) can securely integrate external computer systems. Using the confidential computing capabilities of modern computer systems to protect data and code from the people who host those systems, this approach allows researchers to conduct sensitive work on computers they do not control and to use highly sensitive data confidently on third-party systems, including national supercomputing resources.
Researchers who use TREs to work with sensitive data often face limitations in the scale and capabilities of available computing systems. Effective TREs require trust in both the infrastructure and the people who operate it. TRUSTEE seeks to develop TREs that can protect privacy even from the computers on which they run.
TRUSTEE (Trusted Research on Untrusted Systems using Trusted Execution Environments) could enable secure, cost-effective, and scalable access to large-scale supercomputers, lower-trust institutional systems, and end-user devices. TRUSTEE uses confidential computing, which protects data by creating secure sections of computing resources that remain inaccessible to other users on the same system, to expand the computing environments that researchers can safely use. The Alan Turing Institute leads this project in partnership with University College London A dedicated Patient and Public Involvement Expert (PPIE) consultant leads the project’s PPIE workstream.
Together, with public oversight, they explore how the UK trusted research community can use confidential computing to increase the range, speed, and impact of research involving sensitive data. This capability could accelerate innovation and scientific discovery and help deliver benefits to patients, citizens, and society more quickly and cost-effectively.
What TRUSTEE aims to achieve
By the end of the project, the TRUSTEE team aims to assess technical feasibility alongside governance, assurance, and auditability requirements, with a particular focus on maintaining trust beyond conventional TRE boundaries. The team aims to:
- Demonstrate secure analysis using Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs).
- Produce guidance on governance and assurance for confidential computing.
- Engage diverse publics in shaping trust frameworks.
- Inform the design of future scalable TRE infrastructure.
Progress so far
During the first nine months of delivery, the TRUSTEE team has:
- Established a Public Advisory Group comprising nine members of the public with little or no prior knowledge of Trusted Research Environments.
- Delivered six Public Advisory Group meetings, either online for 2.5 hours or in person at The Alan Turing Institute for full-day workshops. Through conversations, activities, and presentations on relevant topics and technologies, the team has embedded public perspectives into its work.
- Drafted three public-facing explainers on key TRE and TEE concepts such as shared responsibility, security and attestation. The team expects to publish these explainers in Autumn 2026.
- Drafted a series of reports exploring confidential computing and its availability within research infrastructure, the value that TEEs bring to TREs and their use in high-performance computing (HPC) environments, including supercomputers.
- Produced a technical report that evaluates options for implementing TEEs in FRIDGE and assesses the value they could add to the architecture.
- Advanced testing of a multi-GPU TEE implementation demonstrator through research supported by the NVIDIA Academic Grant Program using RTX 6000 nodes, to demonstrate low- and no-trust deployment models and how organisations can conduct trusted research on a computer without changing ownership of the system
- Hosted a Collaboration Café on the topic of “TEEs in TREs” for a technical audience, with plans to hold a follow-up event for a public audience.
Relevance to the DARE UK vision
TRUSTEE supports the DARE UK vision by widening access to trusted research. The project enables researchers to use computing resources that they could not previously trust and to use data safely on systems that were once considered insufficiently trustworthy. The team supports this goal by producing guidance and documentation on implementation options and by demonstrating TEEs in multi-GPU environments. A Public Advisory Group plays an integral role in the project. The team regularly consults the group, and members help improve public understanding of the project through ongoing discussions and co-produced explainers.
About the DARE UK Next-Gen Catalysts
The DARE UK Next-Gen Catalysts are early-stage, exploratory projects developing and testing the next generation of capabilities for Trusted Research Environments (TREs) across the UK. Bringing together researchers, technology specialists, public contributors and other partners, these projects explore bold new ideas that could expand how sensitive data is accessed, analysed and governed while maintaining privacy, security and public trust. Their role is to generate evidence, prototypes and practical learning that can help shape the future of secure, trustworthy data research for public benefit.
