People
We are cryptographers. At King’s College London.
Staff
Benjamin Dowling is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Informatics at King’s College London since August 2024. Previously, Benjamin was a Lecturer of Cybersecurity in the Security of Advanced Systems Research group at The University of Sheffield. Benjamin held postdoctoral researcher positions at the Applied Cryptography group at ETH Zurich, and at the Information Security Group at Royal Holloway, University of London under Kenny Paterson. He received his PhD at the Queensland University of Technology under the supervision of Douglas Stebila, which focused on the provable security of internet protocols. Benjamin is interested in the provable security of real-world cryptography, extending security frameworks to bridge the gap between theoretical cryptography and its usage in the real-world. His notable publications examine the security of secure communication protocols such as SSL/TLS, secure messaging protocols such as Signal and Matrix, and introducing post-quantum security in practical cryptographic protocols.
Eamonn Postlethwaite is a Lecturer in the Cybersecurity group of the Department of Informatics at King’s College London. Previously, he was a post doctoral researcher at Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica, Amsterdam and a PhD student at Royal Holloway, University of London.
Martin Albrecht is a Professor of Cryptography in the Department of Informatics at King’s College London. He is also a Principal Research Scientist at SandboxAQ. Martin obtained his PhD at Royal Holloway under the supervision of Carlos Cid. He then went on to work as a postdoc with Jean-Charles Faugère (LIP6, Paris, France), Gregor Leander (DTU, Lyngby, Denmark) and Kenny Paterson (RHUL, Egham, UK). His Erdős–Bacon Number is 6.
Ngoc Khanh Nguyen is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Cryptography in the Department of Informatics at King’s College London. Previously, he was a post-doc at EPFL in Lausanne Switzerland, hosted by Alessandro Chiesa. Khanh obtained his PhD at ETH Zurich and IBM Research Europe - Zurich, under the supervision of Vadim Lyubashevsky and Dennis Hofheinz.
Postdocs/ Fellows
Fernando Virdia is a Research Associate in Cryptography in the Department of Informatics at King’s College London. Fernando obtained his PhD at Royal Holloway, University of London in 2021, following which he joined the Applied Cryptography Group at ETH Zurich as a post-doc in 2021/22, Intel Labs as a Research Scientist in 2022/23, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa / NOVA LINCS as a post-doc in 2023/24, and Universidad de Buenos Aires as a visiting scholar in 2024.
PhD Students
Filip Trenkic joined the group as a PhD student in 2024, working under the supervision of Eamonn Postlethwaite at King’s College London. Previously, Filip completed his BA-MMath at the University of Cambridge, with a focus on discrete mathematics and algebraic number theory.
George O’Rourke is a PhD student in the Department of Informatics at King’s College London, studying under the supervision of Ngoc Khanh Nguyen. Previously, he obtained a Bachelor’s in Computer Science and Mathematics at the University of St. Andrews, before spending some time working in industry. He is generally interested in the intersection of pure maths and theoretical computer science; in particular, mathematical elements of cryptography. He hopes to pursue research in the construction of cryptographic protocols based on lattices.
Jan Niklas Siemer is a PhD Student in the Department of Informatics at King’s College London under the supervision of Martin Albrecht. Before he joined the group in October 2024, he obtained a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in computer science from Paderborn University, Germany. He is interested in privacy-preserving constructions such as anonymous credential systems, analysing lattice-based security assumptions, and finding more robust approaches for the existing infrastructure.
Sasha Lapiha joined the group in January of 2023 as a visiting PhD student. She is also a part of the Cryptography Group at Royal Holloway, University of London. Before her PhD, she obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics from Taras Shevchenko University of Kyiv and a Bachelor’s + Master’s degree in Computer Science from Ecole Normale Superieure of Paris. Her research interests include designing advanced cryptographic primitives from lattices, analysing the underlying assumptions, improving proof methods, and generally understanding lattices better as a mathematical object.
Shubham Pawar is currently enrolled as a CDT student in the ISG at Royal Holloway, working under the supervision of Martin Albrecht at King’s College London. Previously, he completed his BS-MS at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Pune with a major in mathematics. His research interests lie in the intersection Theoretical Computer Science and Cryptography. At the moment he is working on reductions between cryptographic primitives and hopes to get more into post-quantum cryptography as his PhD progresses.