Our PhD Graduates and A Talk with Taher ElGamal

Our PhD Graduates and A Talk with Taher ElGamal

Two of the great privileges of being a Professor happened today. Our PhD students graduated:

Will and Pavlos are two of the first Ph.D. students who have worked in the Blockpass ID Lab, and today they graduated. I have seldom been so proud of the work we are currently involved with (including homomorphic encryption, zero-knowledge proofs and digital wallets for EU citizens). At the core of their work is trust, cryptography and distributed ledgers — and we have moved so fast in just three years.

The other thing that happened today was a chat with the mighty Tahir ElGamal:

I have read his paper so many times and understand everything about his method in implementing ElGamal public key encryption and digital signatures. Along with this, Taher worked with so many interesting people, including Marty Hellman (who was his Ph.D. supervisor at Stanford) and Paul Kocher (who he met at Netscape).

If you are interested, here are all the great applications of his work:

https://asecuritysite.com/elgamal

Every day, I feel privileged to be able to teach the next generation and to do research with researchers who are really making an impact. Taher, Will and Pavlos show how great work can be achieved from a Ph.D., and how it is also a great personal achievement. It changes those who understand the associated research and helps guide them into the future. I am so pleased to say that Pavlos already has a spin-out company underway, and will be joining us as an academic, soon.