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A Selection of Awards and Honors

The excellence of our cluster is also reflected in the numerous prestigious scientific awards and funding programs with which our researchers have already been honored. They have received ERC Grants, various awards from the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG), the prestigious Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize as well as the Sofja Kovalevskaja Award. In addition, numerous publications have been honored with Distinguished Paper Awards.

A selection of our cluster's awards and honors can be found here.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize

The Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize, awarded by the German Research Foundation, honors outstanding researchers who have early on demonstrated excellent fundamental achievements in their fields and are expected to significantly shape the research landscape in Germany. The prize, endowed with 2.5 million euros, is considered the most important research funding award in Germany. CASA researcher Eike Kiltz is awarded the Leibniz Prize in 2024.

News Article on the Announcement of the Award Winners

News Article on the Award Ceremony

Funding by the European Research Council (ERC)

ERC Advanced Grant:
This funding is designated for active researchers who have made outstanding research contributions in the last 10 years.
Recipients include:

ERC Consolidator Grant:
This funding is intended for researchers with 7 to 12 years of experience since completing their PhD, a promising scientific track record, and an excellent research proposal.
Recipients include:

ERC Starting Grant:
This funding is aimed at researchers who have accumulated 2 to 7 years of experience since their PhD, demonstrate a promising scientific career, and present an outstanding research project.
Recipients include:

More Information about the ERC-Funding

Scientific Awards and Funding Programs of the German Research Foundation (DFG)

The awards of the German Research Foundation recognize outstanding research achievements:

Heisenberg Program
The Heisenberg Professorships of the DFG allow qualified researchers to prepare for an academic leadership position. Gregor Leander received this funding in 2015.

Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize
The Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize recognizes outstanding research achievements in the early stages of a career, providing further incentive for exceptional scientific work. Giulio Malavolta was honored with the prize in 2023.

Emmy Noether Program
The Emmy Noether Program provides exceptionally qualified young researchers the opportunity to qualify for a university professorship through independent leadership of a junior research group over a period of six years. Since 2023, the DFG has been supporting the Emmy Noether group led by research group leader Pascal Sasdrich with his project "COMPUTER-AIDED VERIFICATION OF PHYSICAL SECURITY PROPERTIES (CAVE)."

Sofja Kovalevskaja Award of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation

Cyber Security in the Age of Large-Scale Adversaries

Eike Kiltz. Copyright: CASA, Caroline Schreer

The Sofja Kovalevskaja Award is one of the most generously funded German science awards, enabling the honored researchers to conduct scientific work under unique conditions. For a period of five years, they can independently and without administrative constraints carry out their own research project at an institute of their choice in Germany, and establish their own research groups. In 2010, Eike Kiltz received the award, endowed with 1.65 million euros.

Awards and Funding by the Horst Görtz Foundation

The winners of the first prize of the German IT Security Award 2022 are Pascal Sasdrich, Amir Moradi, and Nicolai Müller (from the left). Copyright: HGI, Schwettmann

Axel Schölmerich, M. Angela Sasse and Horst Görtz (from the left). Copyright: RUB, Marquard

The German IT Security Award

Since 2006, the Horst Görtz Foundation has been honoring the most innovative cybersecurity solutions in Germany with the German IT Security Award. The award comes with a total prize money of 160,000 euros. Various CASA members have received the award in recent years:

2022: 1st place for "Einfach sicher: Ein Werkzeugkasten zur automatisierten Erstellung geschützter Hardware" (Simply Secure: A Toolbox for the Automated Creation of Secure Hardware) for David Knichel, Amir Moradi, Nicolai Müller, and Pascal Sasdrich, Ruhr University Bochum
2020: 3rd place for "TeeRex – Automatisierte Schwachstellenanalyse von Trusted Computing Technologien" (TeeRex - Automated Vulnerability Analysis of Trusted Computing Technologies) for Tobias Cloosters, Michael Rodler, Lucas Davi, University of Duisburg-Essen
2018: 3rd place for "DOMPurify – Client-Side Protection against Cross-Site-Scripting (XSS)" for Mario Heiderich, Ruhr University Bochum/Cure53, Berlin, Jörg Schwenk, Ruhr University Bochum
2016: 2nd place for "Joern – Intelligente Schwachstellensuche durch Graph-Mining" for Konrad Rieck, Daniel Arp, Hugo Gascon, Alwin Maier, Christian Wressnegger, Fabian Yamaguchi, Technische Universität Braunschweig
2012: 2nd place for "LaPiN: Effiziente Authentifizierung für Low End-Hardware" for Stefan Heyse, Eike Kiltz, Ruhr University Bochum, Vadim Lyubashevsky, École Normale Supérieure Paris, Krzysztof Pietrzak, IST Austria
2010: 1st place for "PRESENT – Kostenoptimierte Sicherheit für pervasive Rechnerwelten" for Gregor Leander, TU Denmark, Christof Paar, Ruhr University Bochum, Axel Poschmann, TU Nanyang
2010: 2nd place for "ROPdefender: Ein Tool zur Prävention von Return-Oriented Programming Angriffen" for Lucas Davi, Ruhr University Bochum, Ahmad-Reza Sadeghi, TU Darmstadt, Marcel Winandy, Ruhr University Bochum

Endowed Professorships

Thanks to the generous donation from entrepreneur Horst Görtz, in 1999/2000, the two endowed professorships of Christof Paar (Embedded Security) and Hans Dobbertin (Cryptography) were established in 1999/2000. These professorships laid the foundation for the successful development of IT security in Bochum. Additionally, in 2018, M. Angela Sasse was awarded the Horst Görtz Endowed Professorship for her outstanding research in the field of Human-Centered Security.

Awards for Papers

2019:

1st Place in the CSAW Competition: "1 Trillion Dollar Refund – How To Spoof PDF Signatures"
Best Paper Award: Moradi et al., "Glitch-Resistant Masking Revisited", CHES
NSA Best Scientific Cybersecurity Paper Award & Distinguished Paper Award: Yarom et al., Spectre Attacks: Exploiting Speculative Execution, IEEE S&P
Best Paper Award: Yarom et al., Time Protection: the Missing OS Abstraction, EuroSys

2020:

Best Paper Award: Leander et al., “Improved Differential-Linear Attacks with Applications to ARX Ciphers“, CRYPTO
Best Paper Award: Paar et al., "The Unpatchable Silicon: A Full Break of the Bitstream Encryption of Xilinx 7-Series FPGAs", USENIX Security
Test of Time Award: Cha et al., "Measuring User Influence in Twitter: The Million Follower Fallacy", International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media

2021:

Best Paper Award: Schwenk et al., "XSinator.com: From a Formal Model to the Automatic Evaluation of Cross-Site Leaks in Web Browsers", ACM CCS

2022:

Distinguished Paper Award: Rieck et al., “Dos and Don'ts of Machine Learning in Computer Security“, USENIX Security
Distinguished Artifact Award: Holz et al., “Fuzzware: Using Precise MMIO Modeling for Effective Firmware Fuzzing“, USENIX Security
Distinguished Paper Award: Naiakshina et al., “Let’s Hash: Helping Developers with Password Security“, SOUPS - Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security
2. Platz des Intel Hardware Security Academic Award Program: Holz et al., “Nyx: Greybox Hypervisor Fuzzing using Fast Snapshots and Affine Types”
IACR Test-of-Time Award 2022: Bernstein, Lange, "Faster Addition and Doubling on Elliptic Curves", Asiacrypt
Test of Time Award: Cha et al., "I Tube, You Tube, Everybody Tubes: Analyzing the World's Largest User Generated Content Video System", ACM SIGCOMM

2023:

Distinguished Paper Award: Paar et al., “Red Team vs. Blue Team: A Real-World Hardware Trojan Detection Case Study Across Four Modern CMOS Technology Generations”, IEEE S&P
Distinguished Paper Award: Schwabe et al., “Typing High-Speed Cryptography against Spectre v1”, IEEE S&P
Distinguished Paper Award: Yarom et al., “CryptOpt: Verified Compilation with Randomized Program - Search for Cryptographic Primitives”, PLDI
Distinguished Paper Award & 2. Platz des Internet Defense Prize: Holz et al, "Fuzztruction: Using Fault Injection-based Fuzzing to Leverage Implicit Domain Knowledge", USENIX Security
Distinguished Artifact Award: Schwenk et al., “We Really Need to Talk About Session Tickets: A Large-Scale Analysis of Cryptographic Dangers with TLS Session Tickets”, USENIX Security
Poster Award: Marky et al., “...It's very unacceptable for someone to peek into your privacy.' Chronicles of Shoulder Surfing: Exploring Deep into a Longitudinal Diary Study.", SOUPS - Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security
Best Paper Award: Sasse et al., “As Usual, I Needed Assistance of a Seeing Person: Experiences and Challenges of People with Disabilities and Authentication Methods”, STAST - International Workshop on Socio-Technical Aspects in Security

2024:

Test of Time Award: Sasse et al., "Users are not the enemy", USEC - Symposium on Usable Security and Privacy
Best Paper Award: Stennes et al, "Cryptanalysis of HALFLOOP Block Ciphers: Destroying HALFLOOP-24", IACR Transactions on Symmetric Cryptology & FSE (Fast Software Encryption)

Further Honors and Memberships

Peter Schwabe and Eike Kiltz. Copyright: RUB, Michael Schwettmann

Christof Paar and Mayor Thomas Eiskirch. Copyright: Presse- und Informationsamt der Stadt Bochum

M. Angela Sasse. Copyright: CASA, Caroline Schreer

Pascal Sasdrich. Copyright: Nordrhein-Westfälische Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Künste / Bettina Engel-Albustin 2023

National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST)

With their submitted encryption algorithms CRYSTALS-KYBER and CRYSTALS-DILITHIUM, CASA researchers Eike Kiltz and Peter Schwabe have won the global NIST standardization process for post-quantum cryptography in 2022. This means that encryption methods developed in Bochum, which even quantum computers cannot break, will become the standard in the USA and worldwide.
To the News Article

Honorary Ring of the City of Bochum

For over 50 years, the City Council has been awarding the "Honorary Ring of the City of Bochum." This honors individuals who demonstrate exceptional commitment and contribute significantly to the city. In addition to continuous engagement, the recipients' values, principles, and benevolent critical engagement with society in their respective fields are also considered. Since 2021, Christof Paar is also among the recipients of the Honorary Ring.
To the News Article

National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina

The German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina, founded in 1652 and now known as the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, comprises approximately 1,600 members from various scientific disciplines. Its mission is to represent German science internationally and provide advice to politics and the public. Christof Paar and M. Angela Sasse are among the members of the Leopoldina (2019 & 2023).

North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, Humanities and the Arts

The members of the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences and Arts (Nordrhein-Westfälische Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Künste) engage in dialogue with politics, business, culture, as well as scientific institutions both nationally and internationally. Only outstanding researchers and artists are admitted. M. Angela Sasse was elected to the Academy in 2021.
To the News Article

Young Academy of the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences and Arts

Membership in the Young Academy (Junges Kolleg) is a significant recognition for young scholars and artists in North Rhine-Westphalia. Fellows receive an annual grant of 10,000 euros for up to four years, providing them with the freedom to pursue their own research or artistic endeavors. The prerequisite for membership is outstanding academic achievements at a North Rhine-Westphalian university or research institution. Tim Güneysu was admitted to the Young Academy in January 2015, Pascal Sasdrich in January 2024.
To the News Article