International Association
for Cryptologic Research

We’re looking for a PhD student (4 years, full position) to work with us on the NWO project EPOCHAL (Extensions of POst-quantum CryptograpHy and ALgorithms). The last years have seen a lot of focus on building encryption systems and signature schemes that are secure against quantum attacks. This involves analyzing them in a security model where the attacker has a quantum computer. While the replacement schemes are not perfect fits in terms of speed or size, the community has reached some workable solutions. However, there is a lot of usage of public-key cryptography that goes beyond these core building blocks – many real-world solutions need to establish related public keys, which involves using the structure of elliptic curves, or to verify the validity of public keys. Currently deployed protocols often inherently use properties of the pre-quantum building blocks. For those, we do not (yet) have matching or sufficiently efficient replacements among systems that can resist attacks with quantum computers. The goal of this project is to develop exactly such solutions and to analyze their security. The PhD position is embedded in the Coding Theory and Cryptology group in the Discrete Mathematics (DM) cluster with Tanja Lange as main supervisor. We work closely with the Applied and Provable Security group (also part of DM) and Kathrin Hövelmanns is part of the project team. Please note that applications must be received via the TU/e application site https://jobs.tue.nl/en/vacancy/phd-on-postquantum-cryptography-1101449.html and the "APPLY NOW" button on that page. The page also has some general information about the employment conditions.