First of all, congratulations on your new status as tenured faculty. What does it mean to you to have reached this point in your career?
Since I decided to stay in academia, it has always been my goal to get a tenured position for life. So this is a dream come true. It's a goal that I've been working towards for a very, very long time.
What makes working at CISPA special for you?
What I particularly appreciate is the environment here at CISPA. We have a very strong group of researchers working on cryptography. I really appreciate the collaboration with my colleagues there. We are also all on the same floor and it's a super cool atmosphere and a great environment. I particularly enjoy working with my colleague Christoph Lenzen, who works on distributed protocols. It's really great to have so many people around you who you can work with and who are always available. I would also like to thank my colleagues and all the people who help me in my research and in the background. This is immensely important and we all really appreciate it, but we don't say it often enough.
You work in the field of cryptography. What do you want to focus on in your research over the next few years?
Last year, I was awarded an ERC grant for a project on how to make distributed systems more secure. These are systems where you don't just have one central server, but several servers that operate an online shop, for example. These systems have to operate this online service together and communicate with each other. However, it can sometimes happen that one of these servers breaks down. Then, of course, you want the online shop to remain online. I'm working on these types of protocols that have a certain kind of resilience. It's certainly one of my main goals for the next four or five years to use modern cryptography to make such systems more performant and secure.
Will anything change for you in your work now that you are ‘tenured’?
No, it doesn't really make a difference to me. Of course, it's nice to have a permanent contract now, but I don't think it changes anything in everyday life.
The news about the positive evaluation came while you were leading the Summer School in Cryptography. How important is the promotion of young scientists to you?
It's very important, of course, and at various levels. I believe that if you don't train a new generation of researchers, the research field will die out. You have to pass on your knowledge and show people that you are prepared to talk about your research and answer questions. I think many students are often still a bit shy when it comes to sharing their knowledge, so it's important to show that you're not someone who you have to be afraid to ask a question. I think that's very important. The setting of a summer school is exactly the right one to build more closeness with each other, because everything takes place in a more familiar environment. That's why I think it's great that we can do this at CISPA, especially with such outstanding speakers.
What advice would you give to the next generation who are aiming for a tenured position themselves? What was the most important thing for you on the way to this point?
It is important to simply pursue the research problems that interest you and to try to pass on the enthusiasm that you find for these problems to others in as accessible a way as possible. Because I believe that you will then also be successful with your research. Passing on this passion is a very important skill that you have to learn so that you can get other people excited about your own research.
Thank you very much for the interview and good luck with your projects.
