I’m a post-doctoral researcher in the COSIC research group at KU Leuven, Belgium. I’m currently mostly involved in BELFORT, our hardware accelerator for Homomorphic Encryption BELFORT.
My research interests include implementation and acceleration of fully homomorphic encryption; and development, security and side-channel secure implementation of post-quantum encryption. I was involved in the development of the encryption algorithm Saber, which is one of the candidates for standardization in the NIST post-quantum standardization process.
That was gobbledigook to me, now in human language?
Cryptography is the study of secure communication, for example encrypting messages into a secret code. It is essentially used on nearly every electronic device connected to the internet: computers, smartphones, car keys, medical databases, bank cards, ...
Quantum Computers Cryptography has a problem. Engineers and scientists around the world are working on the next breakthrough in computing: quantum computers. These computers will be extremely good at solving specific problems in for example chemistry or medicine, but unfortunately they will also be capable to break some important cryptographic standards, endangering the security of many cryptographic applications.
Post-Quantum Cryptography is the study of cryptography that is secure against these quantum computers. It is a growing field with much interest from both academia and industry due to the urgency of finding a secure replacement to our current cryptographic algorithms. A brief taster of some of my research in this field for the broad public can be found [here]
Fully Homomorphic Encryption is the next step in encryption, as it allows computation on encrypted data. This means that a server can perform computations on data (coming from one or multiple sources), without learning anything about this data.
Before starting my PhD in Cryptography, I did Bachelor and Master in Engineering Science with a specialization in Electrical Engineering. During my engineering studies I took extra courses from the economics and management master at KU Leuven. After my studies I did research on practical artificial intelligence and deep neural networks before switching to my PhD in cryptography.
When I’m not breaking my head over some hard problems, you can find me on the ultimate frisbee field, in the climbing gym or on my mountainbike. I’m an avid music listener and I regularly do Lindy Hop or play my guitar, drum or piano.