Supervision

Working with me

• PhD or Master’s (thesis) students: Students seeking admission for Fall 2024 should check out information on the Faculty of Mathematics’ website. I can supervise/co-supervise students in the C&O (application deadline January 15) and CS (application deadline December 15) departments. Please also see below about what I look for in graduate students.
• Undergraduate students: I will be considering applications for students for the Undergraduate Research Assistantship (URA/USRA) program for Spring 2024. Please see information on the C&O department website; the deadline for Spring 2024 is approximately December 2023. I do not have any other type of research assistantship or internship available.

What I look for in graduate students: The research projects I supervise are in cryptography, and generally involve the “provable security” / “reductionist security” methodology. Please check out my research interests and publications to get an idea of what areas of cryptography I work on. Generally I look for students with an undergraduate background in mathematics or theoretical computer science. It is essential to have studied cryptography at the undergraduate level, and highly preferable to have studied several of the following: number theory (3rd year or above); group theory; theory of computing (Turing machines etc.); computational complexity theory; quantum computing. Ideally students will also have some programming proficiency; Python and C are commonly used general-purpose languages in cryptography. Good preparatory reading for graduate studies in cryptography includes Introduction to Modern Cryptography by Katz and Lindell and Cryptography Made Simple by Smart. For students interested in post-quantum cryptography, background surveys include A Decade of Lattice Cryptography by Peikert and Supersingular Isogenies for Beginners by Costello.

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Current students

I am supervising the following PhD students:

• Camryn Steckel
• Chelsea Komlo (co-supervisor)

I am supervising the following Master’s (thesis) students:

• Ross Evans
• Lewis Glabush

I am supervising the following researchers:

• Pravek Sharma
• Spencer Wilson

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Past students

I have supervised the following postdoctoral researchers:

• Dr. Nina Bindel
• Dr. Praveen Gauravaram
• Dr. Choudary Gorantla
• Dr. Håkon Jacobsen
• Dr. Zia Khan
• Dr. John Schanck

I have supervised the following PhD students:

• Ted Eaton (PhD 2022) – New design and analysis techniques for post-quantum cryptography
• Udyani Herath (PhD 2019) – Next-generation web public-key infrastructure technologies
• Ben Dowling (PhD 2017) – Provable security of Internet protocols
• Janaka Alawatugoda (PhD 2015) – On the leakage resilience of secure channel establishment
• Lakshmi Devi Kuppusamy (PhD 2012) – Modelling client puzzles and denial-of-service resistant protocols
• Moe Sabry (PhD 2023) (co-supervisor) - Securing digital archiving systems against mass breaches and long-term security degradation
• Reza Hassanzadeh (PhD 2014) (associate supervisor) – Anomaly detection in online social networks: using data-mining techniques and fuzzy logic
• Jothi Ramalingam Rangasamy (PhD 2012) (associate supervisor) – Cryptographic techniques for managing computational effort

I have supervised the following Master’s (thesis) students:

• Camryn Steckel (Master’s 2023) – Chosen ciphertext security from zero knowledge proofs
• Spencer Wilson (Master’s 2023) – Post-quantum account recovery for passwordless authentication
• Jason Goertzen (Master’s 2022) – Enabling post-quantum signatures in DNSSEC: one ARRF at a time
• Philip Hodges (Master’s 2021) - Algorithm substitution attacks: detecting ASAs using state reset and making ASAs asymmetric
• Simeon Krastnikov (Master’s 2020) (co-supervisor) - Efficient oblivious database joins
• Karl Knopf (Master’s 2019) - Real world secret leaking: the design and analysis of a protocol for the purpose of leaking documents under surveillance
• Robert Gorrie (Master’s 2018) – Advances towards practical implementations of isogeny-based signatures
• Fletcher Gates (Master’s 2018) – Reduction-respecting parameters for lattice-based cryptosystems
• Brian Goncalves (Master’s 2018) – A secure key encapsulation mechanism in quantum hybrid settings