PhD Studentship in Privacy-friendly Computation

10 June 2014

PhD Supervisor: Dr G Danezis
Application Deadline: Friday, June 27, 2014

Applications are invited for a PhD position in the field of privacy enhancing technologies and cryptographic engineering at the Information Security Group of the UCL Department of Computer Science. The position is funded partly by Microsoft Research (MSR) and will be co-supervised by an MSR researcher.

We expect a candidate to have at least a strong 2:1 degree in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics or a related MSc course. A good engineering mathematics background and a willingness to become fluent with modern cryptographic constructions are necessary. A solid software engineering, compilers, or distributed systems background is desirable.

The successful applicant will study the engineering of tools and services to enable the wide deployment of privacy friendly computation techniques. A number of techniques in theoretical cryptography allow for computations to be performed on encrypted or otherwise obscured private data (including homomorphic encryption, secure multi-party computation and zero-knowledge proofs). The aim of this project is to make those techniques practical and usable by non-cryptographers. Key challenges include a thorough understanding of the cryptographic primitives, but most importantly engineering innovation through the creation of both infrastructures (web services, trusted parties) and tools (compilers, libraries, languages) that implement the theoretical techniques, and provide a usable interface for non-experts to use them.

How to Apply:

Please follow the link to the online application form here: https://prism.ucl.ac.uk/pgadmissions/apply/new?advert=66
You should mark the name of the studentship clearly on your personal statement.
The vacancy closing date is the 27th June 2014.
General enquiries about the application process should be directed to Melanie Johnson at melanie.johnson@ucl.ac.uk.
Questions regarding academic aspects of the project should be directed to George Danezis at g.danezis@ucl.ac.uk.

Funding Notes:

The studentship is open to all but only fully covers UK/EU fees. In addition a tax free stipend of £15,863 per year is provided.