CASA in Social Media

The CASAfant

The so-called "CASAfant" is the mascot of our Cluster of Excellence. We owe this creature to our former CASA PhD students Lea Schönherr, Thorsten Eisenhofer, and Doreen Riepel. Here’s their explanation of why the CASAfant is the perfect mascot for us:

"As our research in CASA is characterized by its holistic and, in particular, interdisciplinary approach, it can sometimes be hard not to lose focus of the big picture. Therefore, we wanted to create a unifying symbol to represent all of our scientific cores in CASA and allows to recognize CASA throughout all of our research hubs – from foundational problems of future cryptography to the usability of cyber security solutions. Although all of these hubs consider cyber security from drastically different angles, the goal is always the same: the development of strong countermeasures against the most powerful adversaries. In order to represent this fight against these large-scale adversaries, we thus picked an equally powerful mascot: the CASAfant. This mascot symbolizes an intelligent and powerful entity that is able to thwart attacks of even the strongest adversaries."

The initial graphic of the CASAfant has become a cuddly toy that accompanies our researchers to conferences, events, and travels around the world. It is adored by many – both young and old.