Four talented researchers from Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) have been awarded a Vidi grant from the Dutch Research Council to further develop their innovative research. Andreas Hülsing, Liesbeth Janssen, Adrie Mackus and Laura Sanità receive the grant for their research into future-proof cryptography, understanding the enigmatic phenomenon of glass formation, building nanoelectronics from the bottom-up and quickly solving optimization problems in, for example, data tranfers. The Vidi grant is worth 800,000 euros.
Future-proof cryptography
Andreas Hülsing focuses on making cryptography future-proof. It is known that quantum computers will break all cryptography used on the Internet today. However, quantum computers also require us to change the way we determine if a cryptographic scheme is secure.
Hülsing and his team will develop new ways to select secure cryptographic schemes for a world with quantum computers. One of the cryptographic schemes he developed was recently selected as a new standard for cryptographic protection by US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Two further schemes have been selected as candidate standards.
Andreas Hülsing is assistant professor in the Coding Theory and Cryptology group at the department of Mathematics and Computer Science. He obtained his PhD in 2013 at the Technical University of Darmstadt, after which he started as a postdoc at TU/e in the same year. More about Hülsing's research on post-quantum crytography can be found in this article.
Unravelling glass formation
Using advanced machine-learning methods, Liesbeth Janssen and her team will develop a new theory of glass formation. Glass has been used for centuries and continues to find many new industrial applications, but remains poorly understood. Glass is deemed to be a special form of a solid. While the material feels hard, it lacks a regular crystalline structure. Physicists still cannot explain the transition from a liquid to this special solid form.
If Janssen succeeds in solving this mystery, numerous applications come within reach. Fast-working computer chips, for example, or recyclable plastic. The glass phase can even help us better understand asthma and cancer metastasis.
Liesbeth Janssen is associate professor in the Theory of Polymers and Soft matter
