PhD position in Information Security & Cryptography

«A place where knowledge is created» - As one of Europe's leading universities of economics and business administration, the University of St.Gallen (HSG), Switzerland, is committed to the education of over 8500 students and is one of the largest employers in the region, providing around 3100 employees with an attractive and innovative environment for research.

The Institute of Computer Science at the University of St. Gallen opens a PhD position in Information Security and Cryptography to be filled starting in November 2020 or by mutual agreement.

PhD position in Information Security & Cryptography

70%

We are looking for an excellent, motivated, self-driven doctoral student to work in the area of information security and cryptography. The position is within the group of Prof. Katerina Mitrokotsa (Chair of Cyber Security) who is doing research in cryptographic protocols that guarantee reliable authentication, privacy-preservation and verifiable delegation of computation. The topic of this project is focusing on investigating security and privacy issues for resource-constrained devices (e.g., sensors) that rely on external untrusted servers in order to perform computations. More precisely, the student shall be working on investigating efficient authentication and verifiable delegation of computation mechanisms that provide: i) provable security guarantees, and ii) rigorous privacy guarantees. The overall aim of the PhD position will be to design and evaluate provably secure cryptographic protocols for privacy-preserving authentication and verifiable delegation of computation protocols. The research shall also consider the case where multiple clients outsource jointly computations to untrusted cloud servers.

Key Responsibilities:

• Perform exciting and challenging research in the domain of information security and cryptography.
• Support and assist in teaching security and cryptography courses.

Essential Requirements:

• The PhD student is expected to have a MSc degree or equivalent, and strong background in mathematics and/or theoretical computer science, with some background in cryptography.
• Experience in one or more domains such as cryptography, design of protocols, secure multi-party computation and differential privacy is beneficial.
• Knowledge in cryptography is expected, while knowledge in differential privacy and or information theory is beneficial but not required.
• Mathematical maturity is essential. 

Could this be the opportunity you have been waiting for? Please submit your full application through our online tool (including a cover letter, curriculum vitae, and references) until 31.08.2020.

For more information about the position you can contact Prof. Mitrokotsa (aikaterini.mitrokotsa@unisg.ch)