Léo Ducas

Assistant Professor, Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica

Léo Ducas obtained his PhD at ENS Paris, on the topic of lattice-based cryptography. After a postdoc at UCSD, he joined CWI in 2015. He obtained a VENI Grant in 2016, and started a tenure-track at CWI in 2017.

He does research on cryptology, and he is more specifically interested in theoretical and practical aspects of lattice-based cryptography. He is involved in the design of fast algorithms for use in lattice-based cryptographic protocols, and in the design of optimized cryptographic protocols for practice. This work includes candidates Quantum-safe protocols for the NIST standardization competition (NewHope, Frodo, Kyber, Dilithium).

He is also interested in the precise security estimations of lattice problems, the fine tuning of cryptanalytic algorithms, and their implementations. In particular, he is very active in the development of the FPLLL lattice reduction library, so as to test in practice the latest algorithmic advances, but also to provide useful tools for prototyping new algorithms. He has also contributed to quantum cryptanalysis of lattice-based schemes, showing that not all lattices problems are equally resistant to quantum computing.

Program Visits

Lattices: Algorithms, Complexity, and Cryptography, Spring 2020, VMware Research Fellow