PhD student position in Information Security and Cryptography

Information about the department
The Department of Computer Science and Engineering is a joint department at Chalmers University of Technology and the University of Gothenburg, with activities on two campuses in the city of Gothenburg. The department has around 210 employees from over 30 countries. Our research has a wide span, from theoretical foundations to applied systems development. We provide high quality education at Bachelor's, Master's and graduate levels, offering over 120 courses each year. We also have extensive national and international collaborations with academia, industry and society.

Major responsibilities
We are looking for an excellent, motivated, self-driven doctoral student to work in the area of information security and cryptography. The position is for five years at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, within the division of Networks and Systems and the Systems Security group, who are doing research on fields ranging from authentication in RFID systems and sensor networks, vehicular security, biometric authentication, intrusion detection and response.

The PhD student will join the Chalmers Systems Security group, working in the area of information and communication security with a focus on security and privacy issues in wearable computing devices. More precisely, the student shall be working on investigating efficent authentication mechanisms for wearable computing devices (RFID tags, sensors connected with mobile phones or other wireless devices) that provide: i) accurate and transparent authentication, ii) rigorous privacy guarantees, even if multiple wearable devices are involved in the authentication. The overall aim of the announced PhD position will be to develop nearly optimal algorithms for achieving security while minimising resource use and guranteeing privacy-preservation.

More concretely, part of the research will involve the analysis and development of authentication protocols in specific settings. This will include investigating resistance of both existing and novel protocols against different types of attacks, theoretically and experimentally. In addition to investigating established settings, such as smarthomes, healthcare applications and collaborative data processing. This will be done by grounding the work in a generalised decision-making framework. The project should result in the development of theory and authentication mechanisms for noisy, constrained settings that strike an optimal balance between reliable authentication, privacy-preservation and resource consumption. 

The PhD student will be supervised by Prof. Katerina Mitrokotsa and will have the chance to collaborate with well-known researchers in the area of information security. Some previous research related to this research project can be found here: http://www.cse.chalmers.se/~aikmitr/

Katerina Mitrokotsa's research is currently funded by the European Commission and the Chalmers ICT Areas of Advance and the Swedish Research Council.

Position summary
Full-time temporary employment. PhD student positions are limited to five years and normally include 20 per cent departmental work, mostly teaching duties. Salary for the position is as specified in Chalmers' general agreement for PhD student positions. Currently the starting salary is 27,835 SEK a month before tax. The position is intended to start in Sept-Oct 2015.

Qualifications
To qualify as a PhD student, you must have a master's level degree corresponding to at least 240 higher education credits in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or in a related discipline.

Experience in one or more of cryptography, probability and statistics, decision and game theory are beneficial. Mathematical maturity is essential. As for all PhD studies, a genuine interest and curiosity in the subject matter and excellent analytical and communication skills, both oral and written, are needed. 

You may apply even if you have not completed your degree, but expect to do so before the position starts. Knowledge of Swedish is not a prerequisite for applying since English is our working language for research, and we publish internationally. Both Swedish and English are used in undergraduate courses. Half of our researchers and PhD students at the department come from more than 30 different countries.

Chalmers continuously strives to be an attractive employer. Equality and diversity are substantial foundations in all activities at Chalmers.

Application deadline: August 31, 2015

For questions, please contact:
Aikaterini Mitrokotsa, Networks and Seystems, +46 31772 1040, aikmitr@chalmers.se
Christos Dimitrakakis, Computing Science, +46 31772 1044, chrdimi@chalmers.se

*** Chalmers declines to consider all offers of further announcement publishing or other types of support for the recruiting process in connection with this position. ***