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Abstract: Post-quantum cryptography (PQC) is a new class of cryptography that resists in theory (mathematical) attacks from quantum computers. Indeed, PQC relies on new mathematical foundations for which no efficient quantum algorithms have been discovered yet to break them. PQC is at the basis of new standardization efforts by NIST for public key cryptography and digital signatures. Its lattice-based mathematical structures are also the foundation for fully homomorphic encryption schemes, zero-knowledge proofs and computing on encrypted data in general.

This seminar will NOT be on the mathematics but on the digital design challenges of these novel cryptographic structures on existing hardware platforms: CPU, GPU, FPGA, ASIC. On top, these implementations also must resist a wide variety of side-channel, fault, and micro-architectural attacks. Post-quantum algorithms promise to resist the attacks developed for quantum computers. Yet, their implementations also must resist attacks on classic platforms.

These designs challenges will be situated in the context of a recent report on “Revitalizing the U.S. Semiconductor Ecosystem” describing a set of recommendations on semiconductors and system security. In this presentation, we will demonstrate how our research addresses these recommendations, and we will illustrate this with recent results.

Bio: Dr. Ir. Ingrid Verbauwhede is a Professor in the research group COSIC at KU Leuven. She is currently on sabbatical at Stanford and has a visiting faculty position at Google. She is a fellow of IEEE and of IACR. She is a member of the Royal Academy of Belgium. She received the IEEE 2017 Computer Society Technical Achievement Award. She delivered the 2022 IACR distinguished lecture. She received the 2023 IEEE Don Pederson award for “pioneering contributions to energy-efficient and high-performance secure integrated circuits and systems”, and the 2024 EDAA Achievement Award. She received two EU ERC Advanced Grants: one in 2016 and a second one in 2021.

She is a pioneer in the field of efficient and secure implementations of cryptographic algorithms on many different platforms: ASIC, FPGA, embedded, and cloud. With her research, she bridges the gaps between electronics, the mathematics of cryptography, and the security of trusted computing. Her group owns and operates an advanced electronic security evaluation lab at the KU Leuven. According to Google Scholar she has an H-index of 93. Her list of publications is available https://www.esat.kuleuven.be/cosic/people/ingrid-verbauwhede/ or https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ZyG1ZGgAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao