Research

My research interests include:

• Applied cryptography: key exchange protocols; post-quantum cryptography; digital signatures; public key encryption; client puzzles / proofs of work; elliptic curve cryptography; quantum cryptography
• Internet security: network security protocols (SSL/TLS, SSH, Tor, …); public key infrastructure (PKI); authentication

Publications

My full list of publications is available here. My most recent papers are:

Presentations

You can download slides from my presentations.

Software

I am co-founder of the Open Quantum Safe project. Check out our code on Github.

Board membership and conference chairing

• IACR Communications in Cryptography – Editorial board member (2024–present)
• Crypto 2024 – Program committee co-chair
• Real World Cryptography 2024 – General chair
• Crypto 2023 – Program committee area chair (protocols/public key cryptography)
• Real World Cryptography steering committee – Member (2022–present)
• IEEE Security & Privacy – Department editor, Cryptography (2021–present)
• Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems (CHES) 2021 – Artifact evaluation chair
• Selected Areas in Cryptography (SAC) steering committee – Member (2019–present), Chair (2022–present)
• Designs, Codes and Cryptography – Editorial board member (2019–2023)
• Selected Areas in Cryptography (SAC) 2019 – Co-chair
• ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS) 2018 – Tutorial co-chair
• International Association for Cryptologic Research – Membership Secretary and Director (2017–present)
• Australasian Conference on Information Security and Privacy (ACISP) 2015 – Program committee co-chair

Program committee membership

I am on / have been on the following program committees:

• SAC 2025
• SPIQE 2025
• RWC 2025
• CRYPTO 2024: program committee co-chair
• RWC 2024
• CRYPTO 2023: area chair
• SAC 2023
• RWC 2023
• CHES 2022 artifacts
• SAC 2022
• RWC 2022
• Latincrypt 2021
• CHES 2021 artifacts: artifact evaluation chair
• CT-RSA 2021
• Financial Crypto 2021
• SAC 2020
• Financial Crypto 2020
• SAC 2019: general chair and program committee co-chair
• Financial Crypto 2019
• ASIACRYPT 2018
• SSR 2018
• ACM CCS 2018: tutorials co-chair
• PQCrypto 2018
• CT-RSA 2018
• ACM CCS 2017
• Privacy, Security, and Trust 2017
• CRYPTO 2017
• Financial Crypto 2017
• ACM CCS 2016
• BalkanCryptSec 2016
• ACNS 2016
• ASIACCS-SCC 2016
• TLS 1.3: Ready or not?
• ACM CCS 2015
• ACISP 2015: program committee co-chair
• EUROCRYPT 2015
• ASIACCS-SCC 2015
• PQCrypto 2014
• LATINCRYPT 2014
• ACISP 2014
• Usable Security (USEC) 2014
• ACISP 2013
• Usable Security (USEC) 2013
• CT-RSA 2013
• CANS 2012
• Usable Security (USEC) 2012

Grants

My major grants include:

• NSERC Alliance Consortia Quantum grant 2023 — Accelerating the transition to quantum-resistant cryptography ($4,150,155, 2023–2027; with David Jao, Michele Mosca, Daniel Oblak, Rei Safavi-Naini, Barry Sanders)
• Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Discovery grant 2022 — High-assurance post-quantum cryptography ($240,000, 2022–2027)
• Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Alliance grant 2020 — Building a standardised quantum-safe networking architecture ($400,000, 2021–2022; with Michele Mosca and Norbert Lütkenhaus)
• Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Discovery grant 2016 — Quantum-safe cryptography for the Internet ($276,000, 2016–2022)
• Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Discovery Accelerator Supplement grant 2016 – Quantum-safe cryptography for the Internet ($120,000, 2016–2019)
• Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Project 2013 — Internet authentication protocols: theory and practice ($315,000, 2013–2015; with Colin Boyd and Kenny Paterson)

Graduate Students

Please see my supervision page for information about current and past graduate students, as well as about working with me.

Research Experience

• 2022–present: Scientific Advisor to SandboxAQ
• 
  2018-present: Associate Professor in the Department of Combinatorics & Optimization in the Faculty of Mathematics at the University of Waterloo
• 
  2016–2018: Assistant Professor in the Department of Computing and Software in the Faculty of Engineering at McMaster University
• 2013–2016: Senior Lecturer in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and the School of Mathematical Sciences in the Science and Engineering Faculty at the Queensland University of Technology
• 
  2010–2013: Lecturer in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and the School of Mathematical Sciences in the Science and Engineering Faculty at the Queensland University of Technology
• 2009–2010: Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Information Security Institute at the Queensland University of Technology
  • Supervisor: Prof. Colin Boyd
  • Topic: Cryptographic aspects of denial of service resistance
• 2004–2009: PhD student in the Department of Combinatorics & Optimization in the Faculty of Mathematics at the University of Waterloo
  • Supervisor: Prof. Michele Mosca
  • Thesis: Classical authenticated key exchange and quantum cryptography
• 
  2003–2004: MSc student at the University of Oxford
  • Supervisor: Prof Dominic J. A. Welsh
  • Thesis: Cryptographic applications of graph theoretic constructions
• 
  Fall 2001, Spring 2002, and Spring 2003: Intern in the Next Generation Cryptography project at Sun Microsystems Laboratories
  • Supervisor: Sheueling Chang Shantz, working with Vipul Gupta, Hans Eberle, and Nils Gura
  • Topic: Elliptic curve cryptography. I worked on software implementations of elliptic curve cryptography and the ECDH and ECDSA algorithms, and integrated them into the widely used OpenSSL and NSS toolkits. Publications: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
• Spring 2001: Undergraduate Research Assistant (USRA) in the Centre for Applied Cryptographic Research at the University of Waterloo
  • Supervisor: Prof. Stefan Wolf
  • Topic: Information theory