The CASA Summer School is an annual event that offers young researchers interesting lectures by high-ranking speakers and the opportunity for international exchange. We cordially invite PhD students, postdoctoral researchers, master's students, and advanced bachelor's students close to graduation from the field of cyber security to participate. They can qualify in advance through an application process.
Join us for the CASA Summer School 2026 at Ruhr-Universität Bochum (Germany) on Cryptography and Distributed Computing from June 22 to 25, 2026.
We are living in the era of large-scale distributed systems where terms such as blockchains, the internet of things, and wide-scale networks have become ubiquitous. It is therefore critical to understand the behaviour of distributed algorithms and cryptography that do not run on a single centralised node but rather are run by many nodes collaboratively. In this summer school, we explore the basics as well as cutting-edge developments in this space that have contributed to a wide-spread adoption of distributed systems in recent years. The summer school covers topics from Consensus Mechanisms to foundational cryptographic protocols like VSS and DKG, as well as Threshold Cryptography and Secure Multi-Party Computation (MPC).
The summer school is open to:
Registration ist closed.
The Summer School takes place at the Veranstaltungszentrum, located on the campus of the Ruhr-Universität Bochum:
Veranstaltungzentrum, Level 04, Room 2a
Universitätsstraße 150
44801 Bochum
Copyright: private
Bio: Ittai is a Research Partner at a16z Crypto Research. His work focuses on algorithms and distributed computing. After completing his PhD at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, he spent nearly two decades in industrial research labs. He began at Microsoft Research Silicon Valley, then became a founding member of the VMware Research Group, and later worked in the Security and Privacy group at Intel Labs. His research areas are distributed computing, Byzantine fault tolerance, blockchain protocols, and cryptography.
Copyright: private
Bio: Erica is an assistant professor of computer science at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. Prior to joining Reed College, Erica received a Ph.D. in computer science from University of Maryland in 2023. Her main research interests are in cryptography and distributed consensus, particularly Byzantine consensus algorithms, which aim to provide correctness and termination guarantees even when some fraction of the devices are actively malicious. Recently, her research has focused on the fine-grained feasibility, impossibility, and efficiency of fundamental consensus problems under different network models.
Copyright: private
Bio: Jonathan received his PhD (with distinction) from Columbia University in 2002, and then worked as a professor in the department of computer science at the University of Maryland for over 20 years. He joined Google as a senior staff research scientist in 2023. His research interests include cryptography, differential privacy, and distributed protocols. Jonathan is a fellow of the IACR and the ACM.
Copyright: CASA
Bio: Julian is a professor of computer science at Ruhr University Bochum. Before joining RUB, he was a tenured faculty member at CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security. His research interests are in applied cryptography and its intersection with distributed computing. His work aims to explore how modern cryptography can improve the robustness and performance of distributed algorithms.
Copyright: privat
Sophia is currently an associate professor at Aarhus University. She graduated from MIT in 2011 with a B.S. in Mathematics with Computer Science (course 18c), and from Boston University in 2020 with a Ph.D. in computer science (specifically, cryptography) under the advisement of Professor Leo Reyzin. Before and during her graduate studies, she worked as a cryptographer and software engineer at MIT Lincoln Laboratory. Her research areas are secure multiparty computation (MPC) and secret sharing.
When research meets future, new ideas come to life: The CASA RC Trust Summer School 2025 offered participants a space to exchange ideas on the latest developments and topics in their field - this year with a highly relevant focus: AI and security.
From June 16 to 20, over 60 researchers and students brought along their various research topics and discussed them in different formats such as lectures, tutorials or poster sessions. This year's program was organized under the technical direction of the CASA PIs Prof. Asja Fischer, Prof. Ghassan Karame and Prof. Bilal Zafar.
Copyright: CASA
Hands-on learning is a cornerstone of academic growth, and this was also the focus of this year's Summer School crypt@b-it 2024. From August 26 to 30, early-career researchers gathered at Ruhr University Bochum's "Beckmanns Hof" to explore a range of topics in cryptography.
The event featured speakers Prof. Léo Ducas (Leiden University), Anca Nitulescu (Input Output Global, Paris), and Maximilian Gebhardt (German Federal Office for Information Security, BSI). It was organized by the Gesellschaft für Informatik (GI), Fachgruppe Kryptologie (FG Krypto), CASA, and the b-it (Bonn-Aachen International Center for Information Technology), in collaboration with the International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR).
Copyright: CASA, Hagedorn
Creativity is always part of science, and this year's CASA Summer School on Software Security was no exception. The three-day event took place from August 14-16 at the Beckmanns-Hof of the RUB under the chairmanship of the CASA PIs Prof. Kevin Borgolte, Prof. Marcel Böhme and Prof. Alena Naiakshina.
The program included not only classical talks where international speakers gave exciting insights into their research. A Capture the Flag Contest, a Science Escape Game and a Summer Pitch gave participants the opportunity to engage with the topic in a playful way.
Invited to Bochum were Prof. Eric Bodden (Heinz Nixdorf Institute at the University of Paderborn and Fraunhofer IEM), Prof. Helen Sharp (The Open University), Prof. Fish Wang (Arizona State University), Prof. Andreas Zeller (CISPA Helmholtz Center for Information Security), and Prof. Verena Zimmermann (ETH Zurich). In addition, Dr. Tamara Lopez (The Open University) and Fabian Schiebel (Fraunhofer Institute for Mechatronics Design IEM) gave concurrent tutorials.
Copyright: CASA, Mareen Meyer
The CASA Summer School 2022 was held from June 20-23 at the Beckmannshof conference center at the RUB. Focus of the event was the topic "Blockchain Security". About 40 participants enjoyed exciting lectures, worked together in hands-on sessions, and used the opportunity to network.
Among the speakers at the Summer School were Elli Androulaki (IBM Research), Ghassan Karame (CASA), Lucas Davi (Universität Duisburg-Essen) und Clara Schneidewind (Max-Planck-Institut for Security and Privacy).
Copyright: CASA, Fabian Riediger
Johanna Luttermann
CASA International Graduate School
(0)234-32-29230
casa-igs(at)ruhr-uni-bochum.de
Mirjam Stricker
CASA International Graduate School
(0)234-32-27601
casa-igs(at)ruhr-uni-bochum.de
