We cordially invite you to the upcoming CASA Distinguished Lecture on Tuesday, November 12.
When: 12.11.2024, 2 PM
Where: Building TZR ("MB"), Level 1, Room S-MO-104, Universitätsstraße 142, 44799 Bochum
Online-Participation: Zoom-Webinar
Abstract. Cryptography plays a prominent role in today's increasingly digital society. In fact, virtually all existing systems rely on cryptography at their core. Therefore, it is utterly important to build and analyze cryptographic protocols to secure real world systems. At the same time, this task has never been more challenging. On the one hand, characteristics of existing systems heavily limit the applicability of complex, yet theoretically-feasible cryptographic schemes. For instance, blockchains makes it very expensive and slow (and even unfeasible in some cases) to execute complex cryptography for authorizing transactions. On the other hand, in recent years it became apparent that the many existing (and yet to come) systems are no longer operating in isolation. Interoperable systems make the cryptographic protocols required for them more complex to design and more intricate to analyze.
In this talk, Pedro Moreno-Sanchez will share his vision for establishing secure and privacy-preserving blockchain applications through cryptographic protocols by showcasing examples of his work in the field. As an illustrative example, he will present their research on adaptor signatures, a novel cryptographic scheme that binds the creation of a digital signature to the knowledge of a cryptographic secret other than the signing key. In the realm of blockchain-based systems, the adaptor signatures scheme has become the building block for many blockchain applications proposed so far. In the second part of the talk, he will present then illustrative examples of their research on adaptor signatures-based blockchain applications.
Bio. Pedro Moreno-Sanchez received his PhD degree in Computer Science from Purdue University (USA) in 2018. Prior to joining the IMDEA Software Institute in October 2020, Pedro held a postdoctoral position at Technical University of Vienna (Austria). During his PhD, he was also a visiting student at Ripple Labs (USA) and IBM-Research Zurich (Switzerland). He received his bachelor and master degree in Computer Science from University of Murcia (Spain). During his master, he was a visiting student at Philips Research Europe (The Netherlands).
Pedro's main research interest lies in the areas of distributed ledgers (blockchain), privacy-enhancing technologies and applied cryptography. His research aims to bridge the gap between theory and practice and design cryptographic protocols with formal security and privacy guarantees that are practical and can help users today.
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