Goodbye, 2023, and Hello To 2024: From Virtual to Physical

Goodbye, 2023, and Hello To 2024: From Virtual to Physical

Well, 2023 has been a strange year. Basically, it was the year that things got back to normal after years of online conferences. Overall, Twitter can give you a basic timeline of a year, so here are a few of my academic highlights. We kicked off Jan 2023 with a Innovation Symposium:

And then by the end of the month, we were off to the Scottish Parliament to showcase the impact that universities have in Scotland:

Over the year, we have had a number of guest talks for students, and in Feb 2023, it was the mighty Jean-Philippe Aumasson (the co-creator of the BLAKE hashing method):

Then it was the co-inventor of the ECC (Elliptic Curve Cryptograpy (ECC) method:

And, on the same day, with Bruce Schneier:

I’ve spent quite a bit of time at the Technology Innovation Centre this year, and in Feb 2023, I was giving an invited talk at the Future Scot Cybersecurity conference:

And, just before my birthday, it was some device hashing in an engagement session:

Then, a talk with students from the co-creator of the Diffie-Hellman method:

And, in promoting KTPs:

One paper I was especially proud of was the co-authored papers on perceptual hashing:

And, then a guest talk from the person who is the “A” in RSA:

And, our forthcoming spin-out (True Deploy) has done so well this year:

The Big Data conference is always a key highlight, and this year I gave an endnote talk:

And, in the talk, I outlined how ChatGPT seemed to think I had invented the Hypervisor:

and a strange encryption method:

In May 2023, I gave evidence at the AGGP on CBDC:

And, was so happy when NIST annouced the winner of the light-weight encryption method:

In July 2023, I was off to the Scottish Parliment again for the BTITC Awards:

And, look what I got for Father’s Day:

One of the highlights of the year, is always the July graduation:

And, over July 2023, I launched a Podcast:

and had some great guests:

At the end of August, we were back at the start of the Semester:

And, in Sept 2023, it was annouced that Edinburgh Napier University was in the Top 10 UK universities for spin-outs (of which we had contributed Zonefox, Symphonic, Cyan Forensics and MemCrypto):

Then, off to Royal Holloway for a keynote talk at Borderless Cyber, and a presentation on the EU GLASS digital wallet:

And, back to Edinburgh for a CiiSec VIP event:

And, from September onwards, I’ve been presenting on Quantum Computers, and one of the first presentations of this was for a keynote talk at ScotSecure West:

But, my main focus at the time was the teaching of the Network Security and Cryptography module, and with Bob and Alice mugs to award:

Then a busy week of presenting of Quantum Computers at Gorgarburn for RBS:

And then at Lloyds Bank on The Mound in Edinburgh:

And with another great speaker:

Things were getting busy, too, as it was FinTech Scotland week, and I delivered an invited talk at this event:

And, it was great to see some of our potential spino-out companies winning awards:

And off to Glasgow in Oct 2023:

And, some new investment for our third spin-out:

In October 2023, I made my first trip of the year to the ExCeL for #RISK London:

And, the highlight of another graduation in Oct 2023:

One of my great crypto heros is Matthew Green, and I was honoured to speak to him in Oct 2024:

At the end of October 2024, our ACE-CSE award arrived:

And, some students gave me a nice greeting:

I have a passion for the implementation of public key encryption, and so proud to contribute to the Bank of England’s CBDC Academic Advisory Group (AAG):

A major highlight of Nov 2023, was the IEEE CAMAD 2023 conference, and chaired by Prof Berk Canberk:

With my student giving a talk:

Then, off to Future Scot 2023:

And, down to the ExCeL again for Black Hat 2023:

And then onto the Times Higher Conference in Liverpool:

On the same day, Lasting Asset received another award:

And, I was honoured to receive “Most Innovative Teacher of the Year”:

I managed to pick up COVID on my trip to London and Liverpool, but still managed to host the annual Christmas lecture:

And, that’s it!