MC2 Researchers Awarded $600K NIST Grant to Continue Work on Next-Generation Cryptography

Three researchers in the Maryland Cybersecurity Center (MC2) were recently awarded $600K from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to continue work in developing next-generation cryptography protocols.

Jonathan Katz, a former UMD professor of computer science who is now at George Mason University, is principal investigator of the two-year project. (Katz plans to continue to collaborate with UMD faculty and advise several UMD graduate students for the immediate future.)

Others involved in the project are Dana Dachman-Soled, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, and Charalampos (Babis) Papamanthou, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering. Papamanthou and Dachman-Soled both have appointments in the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies.

Dachman-Soled says that in addition to other areas of standardization, NIST is currently working to standardize a suite of so-called “post-quantum” cryptosystems—cryptographic systems that will remain secure in the presence of a quantum computer.

Her group is investigating the robustness of the computational problems that underlie these new types of cryptosystems. They are also working to improve the concrete security estimates for various candidate cryptosystems.

This latest funding from NIST builds upon a $1M grant that was awarded in 2015.