Academic Staff
Simon Blackburn is a professor in the Maths Department. He studies algebra, combinatorics, cryptography, and the connections between these subjects. He is interested in the cryptanalysis of post-quantum schemes.
Saqib Kakvi is a lecturer in the Information Security Group. His research focus on bridging the gaps between the theory and practice of cryptography. He has had results about digital signature schemes, with recent results of standardised signature schemes. Recently, he has also been interested in advanced encryption primitives such as time-lock encryption and witness encryption.
Saqib received his doctorate at the Ruhr-University Bochum under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Eike Kiltz. He was then took a postdoc position at University of Bristol in the group of Prof. Nigel Smart. Following that he was a postdoc at Paderborn University and University of Wuppertal in the group of Prof. Dr.-Ing. Tibor Jager.
Keith M. Martin is a professor of information security at Royal Holloway, University of London and director of the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Cyber Security for the Everyday.
He has broad research interests, with a focus on applications of cryptography, and geopolitical aspects of cryptography and cyber security. He is also keen on communicating about cryptography to wider audiences. He is author of the textbook Everyday Cryptography (OUP, 2012), now in its second edition, which introduces cryptography to non-mathematical audiences. He is also author of the popular science book Cryptography: The Key to Digital Security, How it Works and Why it Matters (Norton, 2020).
Keith holds a degree in Mathematics from the University of Glasgow and a PhD from Royal Holloway. Following research positions at the University of Adelaide and the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Keith returned to Royal Holloway in 2000 and served as Director of the Information Security Group from 2010 to 2015.
Chris J Mitchell received his BSc and PhD degrees in Mathematics from Westfield College, University of London in 1975 and 1979 respectively. He was appointed as Professor of Computer Science at Royal Holloway in 1990, having previously worked at Racal Comsec, Salisbury, UK (1979-85) and Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, Bristol, UK (1985-90). After joining Royal Holloway he co-founded the Information Security Group in 1990, and helped launch the MSc in Information Security in 1992. His research interests span information security, focusing on applications of cryptography, and combinatorial mathematics. He is co-editor-in-chief of Designs, Codes and Cryptography, and section editor for Section D of The Computer Journal. He has been actively involved in information security standardisation for more than 30 years, and has acted as editor for over 20 ISO/IEC standards; in 2010 he was a recipient of the IEC 1906 Award, recognising an exceptional contribution to the work of the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC).
Sean Murphy is a professor in the School of Mathematics and Information Security at Royal Holloway (University of London). His academic research concentrates on mathematical cryptology. He was a leader of the NESSIE project, a European project to assess cryptographic primitives for future possible standardisation. He was also a member of the committee which set up ECRYPT project, a European Network of Excellence in Cryptology consiting of 35 European organisations working in cryptology.
Siaw-Lynn Ng is a senior lecturer in the Information Security Group. Her research interest lies in combinatorics and finite geometry and their applications in information security. Recent work includes research into the properties of privacy and resilience in distributed storage codes, anonymity in peer-to-peer reputation systems, and security in swarm robotics.
Rachel Player is a lecturer in the Department of Information Security and in 2020-2021 is a visiting researcher at The Alan Turing Institute. Previously, she was a postdoctoral researcher at Royal Holloway. Before that, she was a visiting researcher and a postdoctoral researcher in the PolSys team of LIP6 at Sorbonne Université in Paris. She obtained her PhD from Royal Holloway in 2018.
Rachel’s main research interests are in post-quantum cryptography, especially in the design and cryptanalysis of lattice-based cryptographic schemes. Rachel is interested in Privacy Enhancing Technologies and she has worked extensively in the area of applied homomorphic encryption. Recently, Rachel has been interested in the application of quantum algorithms in cryptanalysis.
Elizabeth Quaglia is a reader in the Information Security Group.
Her research focusses on public-key cryptography, including identity-based and attribute-based encryption, digital signatures and key exchange protocols. More recently, she has specialised in privacy notions for advanced protocols such as e-voting and the security of blockchain technologies.
Elizabeth studied Mathematics at Universita degli Studi di Torino in Italy before coming to Royal Holloway for her MSc in Mathematics of Cryptography and Communications, and her PhD under the supervision of Kenny Paterson. She was a postdoc in the crypto team at ENS Ulm in Paris, and became visiting lecturer in the Computer Science Department at University of Cape Coast, Ghana, in partnership with Academics Without Borders. She then joined the Huawei France Research Center in Paris, as senior research scientist, for two years. She came back to Royal Holloway as a lecturer in the Information Security Group.
Yiannis Tselekounis is a lecturer in the Information Security Group (ISG) at Royal Holloway, University of London. Before, joining ISG he was a postdoctoral fellow in Cryptography at the School of Computer Science of Carnegie Mellon University, a faculty fellow at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences of New York University, and a doctoral researcher in Cryptography and Information Security at the University of Edinburgh.
His research focuses on the design and the security analysis of cryptographic primitives and protocols, including end-to-end encrypted messaging, private information retrieval, blockchain technologies, non-malleable cryptography and cryptographic hardware.
Christian Weinert is a lecturer in the Information Security Group (ISG) at Royal Holloway, University of London. Before, he was a doctoral and postdoctoral researcher in the Cryptography and Privacy Engineering Group (ENCRYPTO) at TU Darmstadt, Germany.
His research focuses on the design, implementation, and evaluation of privacy-preserving protocols at large scale, especially for private set intersection and machine learning applications. During his bachelor and master studies, he worked in the area of secure long-term archiving.
PhD Students
Erin Hales studied maths at the University of Manchester and did an MSc in Maths and Foundations of Computer Science at the University of Oxford before joining the CDT. She is interested in post-quantum cryptography.
Dan Jones is a PhD student in the Information Security Group. Dan previously studied Computer Science at Cambridge University. He then spent several years working as a software developer before completing a master’s in mathematics at Bristol University. In 2020, he joined the ISG as part of the CDT in Cyber Security for the Everyday. Dan’s research interests lie in cryptography and its applications, focusing on the design and analysis of cryptographic protocols.
Angelique Faye Loe completed a BSc Hons in Mathematics at the Open University and an MSc in Mathematics of Cryptography and Communications at Royal Holloway. Angelique’s primary research interest is cryptography.
Tabitha Ogilvie is a PhD student in the Information Security Group, studying as part of the CDT in Cybersecurity for the Everyday. Her research is centred around applied homomorphic encryption, particularly considering how machine learning computation can be outsourced to the cloud without compromising the privacy of the underlying data. She is also interested in other aspects of privacy preserving machine learning, adversarial machine learning, and, more broadly, the links between cryptography and machine learning.
Colin Putman graduated from the Open University in 2016 with a joint-honours bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and Mathematics. Colin then went on to complete a master’s degree in Information Security at Royal Holloway, graduating in 2018, before joining the CDT program. Colin’s research interests are cryptography, protocol design and the security of online gaming.
Wrenna Robson has had an eclectic education and career history before joining the CDT, from teaching in schools to microprocessor architecture documentation. Her background is originally in mathematics, with a BA from the University of Cambridge and a research MSc from the University of Bristol focusing on the properties of the torsion points of elliptic curves. She is interested in all areas of cyber security, but is particularly excited to learn more about cryptography and the geopolitics of cyber security.
Joe Rowell studied Computer Science at Royal Holloway before joining the CDT in 2018. His research interests primarily cover algorithms for the shortest vector problem and their implementations, with a particular emphasis on efficiency. However, Joe would categorise himself as an aspiring “latticestician”, and thus is interested in all aspects of lattice-based cryptography. You can find any open-source code that Joe has written here.
Past Members
- Martin R. Albrecht
- Mike Burmester
- Carlos Cid
- Alex Dent
- Steven Galbraith
- Dieter Gollmann
- Kenny Paterson
- Fred Piper
- Bertram Poettering
- Matt Robshaw
- Yixin Shen
- Peter Wild