Current Research Themes

 

Post-Quantum Cryptography

Modern public key cryptography protocols are at the risk of being rendered insecure by future large-scale quantum computers. Post-quantum cryptography aims to solve this challenge using several new algorithms based on cryptographic primitives such as lattices, supersingular elliptic curve isogenies, error correction codes, hash functions, multivariate equations and zero knowledge proofs. Our objectives in this direction include: ▶ hardware accelerator design ▶ optimized software implementation ▶ side-channel analysis and countermeasures

 

Computation on Encrypted Data

Secure privacy-preserving computation involves performing complex operations such as machine learning, image processing and database management on encrypted data. This is achieved using cryptographic tools such as homomorphic encryption, functional encryption, secure multi-party computation and secret sharing. Our objectives in this direction include: ▶ high-performance FPGA-based acceleration for cloud ▶ energy-efficient ASIC design for edge devices ▶ demonstration of new applications

 

Low-Cost Encryption and Authentication

Traditional encryption and authentication protocols are often too expensive for ultra-low-power systems such as RFID tags, smart cards and biomedical devices, which are severely constrained not only in terms of logic area and power but also on-chip memory and computational resources. Our objectives in this direction include: ▶ implementation of light-weight cryptography ▶ co-design of protocols with efficient circuit primitives

 

Side-Channel Attacks and Countermeasures

Side-channel attacks are a major concern for embedded software and hardware implementations of algorithms which process secret information. This applies not only to cryptography but also to error correction, digital signal processing, machine learning and other algorithms. Our objectives in this direction include: ▶ modeling and analysis of side-channel leakage ▶ implementation of low-overhead countermeasures

 

Quantum Computation

The rise of cloud-based quantum computing has enabled several new research directions such as quantum cryptanalysis, quantum cryptography, post-quantum cryptography, quantum-enhanced machine learning, quantum bioinformatics and secure quantum computation. Our objectives in this direction include: ▶ design and analysis of efficient quantum circuits ▶ mapping algorithms to quantum architectures