Summer School 2024: Privacy-Preserving Cryptography
We are inviting applications from undergraduate, graduate students and researchers in the area of Cybersecurity and related fields. This year's second summer school will be focusing on Privacy-Preserving Cryptography. During our annual scientific event, students will have the opportunity to follow one week of scientific talks and workshops, present their own work during poster sessions and discuss relevant topics with fellow researchers and expert speakers. The program will be complemented by social activities.
Application Process: Please upload your application via our application form uploading your CV, a Motivation Letter, University Certificate of Transcript of Records.
Notification of Acceptance: Several rounds of acceptance, roughly 3 weeks after application
Fee: 200,-€ (includes full program, food and beverages during the week, and social activities)
Deadline for Regular Application: June 30, 2024
After that option for late Application within availability.
Travel Grant: We are offering travel grants to support students who participate actively in the whole event and present their work during a poster session. With your application, you can apply for a grant (actual travel cost spent up to a certain limit, economy flight, train ticket 2nd class). Please do not book any travel arrangements before you have been selected by our jury and accepted to our Summer School. After acceptance, please send your exact travel arrangements to cysec-lab@cispa.de for approval prior to booking anything. We will confirm if/that your expenses will be covered and you will be reimbursed after completing the Summer School successfully.
Presentations: There will be at least one session, during which participants can present their own work / scientific poster. The presentation is not mandatory to receive a certificate of attendance, but we are highly encouraging you to contribute your work to this session and as it will provide you with valuable feedback from an expert audience and might kindle interesting discussions.
When: July 29 - 31, 2024
Where: CISPA - Helmholtz Center for Information Security, Saarbruecken.
Anna Lysyanskaya (Brown University)
Titles:
Monday: "History of blind signatures, definitions, examples based on RSA and Sigma-protocols"
Tuesday: "The Basics of Anonymous Credentials" and Mercurial Signatures"
Short Bio: Anna Lysyanskaya is the James A. and Julie N. Brown Professor of Computer Science at Brown University, which she joined in 2002 after receiving her Ph.D. from MIT. A theme of her academic research is on balancing privacy with accountability, and specifically allowing users to prove that they are authorized even while not revealing any
additional information about themselves. Professor Lysyanskaya is a recipient of numerous awards from the National Science Foundation, as well as industry grants from IBM, Google, and Facebook. She has served on the Board of Directors of the International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR) since 2012, and served as Program co-Chair of the annual Crypto conference in 2023. In 2024, she was awarded the Levchin Prize in Real-World Cryptography.
Stefano Tessaro (University of Washington)
Short Bio: Stefano Tessaro is an Associate Professor in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington, where he holds the Paul G. Allen Development chair. He works primarily on cryptography, computer security and theoretical computer science.
Earlier, he was an assistant professor at UC Santa Barbara for five years, where he held the Glen and Susanne Culler chair. He received a PhD from ETH Zurich in 2010, and held postdoctoral appointments at UCSD and MIT. He received several awards, including a Sloan Research Fellowship, an NSF CAREER award, and a Hellman Fellowship, as well as a best-paper award at EUROCRYPT 2017.
Foteini Baldimtsi (George Mason University)
Title 1 (Tuesday): From Blind Signatures to e-cash and single-use credentials
Title 2: Revocation of Anonymous Credentials
Title 3 (Wednesday): More Applications of blindness: anonymous tokens, decentralized credentials, blockchain mixing
Short Bio: Foteini Baldimtsi is an Associate Professor in the Computer Science Department at George Mason University and Research Advisor in the Cryptography team of Mysten Labs. She received her Ph.D. from Brown University in May 2014 and worked as a postdoctoral researcher in Boston University and University of Athens. Her research interests are in the areas of cryptography, security and data privacy. She focuses on designing provably secure cryptographic schemes for a variety of applications such as privacy preserving identity management and private and scalable blockchain transactions. She is a recipient of an NSF CAREER award as well as Google, IBM and Facebook faculty awards. Her research is funded by NSF, DHS, NSA, CCI, Protocol Labs and the Zcash Foundation.
Please have a look at last year's school, Summer School 2022, or our Digital Summer School 2021 to get a general idea of the event.
If you have any questions or queries, our Summer-School team will be glad to help via summer-school@cispa.de.
If you want to be informed about scientific events and regular summer schools, please register to our newsletter:
Yes, if you attended one of our Summer Schools, of course you are welcome to apply for any of the following years. If there are two Summer Schools in one year, you can apply for both Summer Schools. It is advisable to mention a specific research focus in your application that aligns with your interests and your prior education.
Our jury selects the participants of the Summer Schools. We have strict criteria for selecting participants for our Summer School due to the high number of applications compared to the limited available spots. We give priority to those currently studying or with a background in the Summer School's topic. A foundational knowledge in the field is required, and participants should have reached a certain academic level. For instance, individuals in the early stages of a Bachelor's degree may not qualify. This is important because the Summer School is interactive, and having prior knowledge is crucial for active participation.
You can apply for a travel grant during your application if your travel costs are not reimbursed by your employer. Our jury will select participants and approve the travel grant within availability. You will only receive reimbursement after successful completion of the Summer School which means actively attending every day of the event. There might be additional requirements for a specific Summer School which will be mentioned on the event’s website. If your travel grant was approved you need to hand in receipts after completion of the Summer School for all expenses in connection with your travels. The participation fee secures your spot for the event and covers catering, drinks, course materials and the full program. Thus it cannot be refunded via the travel grant. Only receipts dated within one day before the start of the event until the last day are eligible for reimbursement. Exceptions require prior approval via email. Please book accommodations from our recommendation list when possible or contact us for approval prior your booking.
Your poster should be in portrait format, A0 size, please bring your printed poster with you. If you don’t have the possibility to print it yourself, send it as a PDFX file via email to us within the mentioned deadline. Each presentation will be limited to 5 minutes, followed by a short discussion.
If you have specific dietary restrictions, please include that information in your application. We strive to accommodate all dietary needs to the best of our ability. Additionally, rest assured that there is always a vegetarian option available for individuals with restrictions concerning meat.
Bring your own laptop. Course materials and catering during the event will be provided and is included in the fee. You will receive handouts and presentations after the event of every speaker who agreed to distribute them.
Yes, a certificate will be provided if you successfully attend all days of the Summer School.
We can only reimburse costs for participants. If you bring your partner or a friend to share your hotel room, please provide receipts and comparison prices for the expenses that would have occurred if you traveled alone, and we will reimburse accordingly.
Both individuals should ensure the hotel receipt includes both names. Submit this receipt, and each of you will receive half the reimbursement for the hotel room cost.
If you cancel at short notice after confirming and paying the participation fee, refunds cannot be issued. You can, however, name a substitute participant with similar qualifications. Refunds are contingent on having enough time to rearrange event planning (e.g. transport and catering).