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

• Ontario Cryptography Day Co-founder and co-organizer (2025–present)
• 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 (2017–2022)
• 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:

• RWC 2026
• Indocrypt 2025
• 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)

I am grateful to have received financial support from Amazon Web Services, Cisco, Microsoft Research, the Unitary Fund, and Verisign Inc.

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