International Association
for Cryptologic Research

We are looking for a strong PhD-candidate. There may be possibilities for a postdoc position on the project “Verified voting protocols and blockchains”.

Deadline:1 November 2023. https://phd.nat.au.dk/for-applicants/open-calls/november-2023/verified-voting-protocols-and-blockchains

The PhD positions include full tuition waiver and a very competitive scholarship. Aarhus University provides international students with a safe and stable environment, a high standard of living and a wealth of social opportunities. Besides having an excellent reputation that enables our PhD graduates to find outstanding employment prospects, Aarhus University offers attractive working conditions, research support and campus resources.

https://cs.au.dk/education/phd/

https://international.au.dk/

This project is supported by the Danish DIREC research center. It is a collaboration between Aarhus University, the Alexandra Institute and Concordium ApS. The aim of the project is work towards secure implementations of Blockchain Voting Governance Protocols and Internet Voting Protocols.

Voting and blockchains are intimately connected. Voting is used in blockchains for consensus, governance, and decentralized organizations. Conversely, elections are based on trust, which means that election systems ideally should be based on algorithms and data structures that are already trusted. Blockchains provide such a technology. They provide a trusted bulletin board, which can be used as part of some voting protocols. Moreover, voting crucially depends on establishing the identity of the voter to avoid fraud and to establish eligibility verifiability. Decades of research in voting protocols have shown how difficult it is to combine the privacy of the vote with the auditability of the election outcome. It is easy to achieve one without the other, but hard to combine both into one protocol. Thus, the topic of this research proposal is to investigate voting protocols and their relation to blockchains. The team will work on security proofs of these protocols and their implementations.

Closing date for applications:

Contact: Bas Spitters

More information: https://phd.nat.au.dk/for-applicants/open-calls/november-2023/verified-voting-protocols-and-blockchains