Automated verification of cryptographic protocols: I try to teach computers how to produce or verify proofs of cryptographic protocols. It’s not easy. Computers are stupid. We have had a fair bit of success so far with symmetric encryption based on block ciphers, are currently working on message authentication codes. We hope to move on to public key encryption soon. I’m currently working on the verification of the e-voting protocol developed by the Norwegian government for their public elections.

Electronic Voting: I develop electronic voting protocols that preserve the voter’s privacy and the authenticity of their vote even when malware may have contaminated some of their devices. I also plan to make user studies to determine the usefulness of the techniques I design.

Pairing-based cryptography: While in Calgary, I did research in efficient cryptographic protocols using pairings. I was particularly interested in making efficient attribute-based encryption and signature algorithms, either by improving on previously constructed protocols, or by specializing their functionality. I’m currently trying to do away with the paring operation in identity-based and attribute-based cryptosystems by using hardware tokens.