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ERC Starting Grant for Maria Eichlseder!

We are happy to announce that our institute’s Maria Eichlseder received an ERC Starting Grant from the European Research Council for her project “KEYLESS“! It will explore new research directions on keyless cryptographic functions to improve efficiency and security.

Maria’s ERC Starting Grant has been the third ERC grant awarded to our institute’s researchers since 2016! Starting in January 2025, Maria will receive funding of almost 1.5 million euros over the next five years.

Her project – KEYLESS – deals with encryption, but without the eponymous key. The focus is on the core component of cryptographic systems, the so-called primitive, which is responsible for the security of the entire system. For a long time, it was mainly primitives with keys, so-called block ciphers, that were used and scientifically analysed. In recent years, however, primitives without keys have become very popular, as these components offer a number of advantages.