Prof. Dr. Christof Paar is an expert in applied cryptography at the Ruhr Universität Bochum (RUB) - and has been researching IT security for more than 20 years. Now the National Academy of Sciences has honored his outstanding achievements for science and has appointed him as a new member.
Since 2001, Prof. Dr. Christof Paar has headed the Chair for Embedded Security at the Ruhr Universität Bochum (RUB) and conducts research on the facets of IT security at the Horst Görtz Institute for IT Security (HGI), Research Department of the RUB. Previously, he was a professor at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) in Massachusetts (USA). Paar is a trained electrical engineer and holds a PhD in computer architectures for arithmetic in finite bodies.
Top research in cryptography
In his research, Paar deals primarily with the engineering aspects of cryptography. He has made relevant contributions to the security of embedded systems and hardware security and was awarded the prestigious ERC Advanced Grant of the European Research Council in 2016. In 1999 he founded the CHES (Conference on Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems) at the WPI, which has become one of the most important international conferences for cryptography.
In addition, Paar was significantly involved in setting up the Horst Görtz Institute for IT Security at the RUB, which today is one of the largest and most renowned research institutions in the field of cyber security in Europe. Paar also promotes the founding of IT security start-ups out of the HGI and founded Escrypt GmbH in 2003 together with Willi Mannheims, one of the first companies to focus on industrial data security. Escrypt has been part of Robert Bosch GmbH since 2012.
Excellence Cluster CASA and Max Planck Institute in Bochum
Since 2019, Prof. Dr. Christof Paar, Prof. Dr. Thorsten Holz and Prof. Dr. Eike Kiltz have been spokespersons for the Cluster of Excellence "CASA - Cyber Security in the Age of Large-Scale Adversaries", which is funded by the German Research Foundation with around 35 million euros for an initial period of 7 years. In addition, Paar is one of the founding directors of the Max Planck Institute for Cyber Security and Privacy (MPI), which is based in Bochum and conduct basic research on IT security at an international level.
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