I am a cryptographer and security architect at Infineon Technologies, Germany. I received a master’s degree of technical mathematics from Graz University of Technology, Austria in 2005. Subsequently, I became a Ph.D. student at the Institute of Applied Information Processing and Communications (IAIK) at the same university. In 2010, I finished my doctoral dissertation on the analysis of cryptographic hash functions under the supervision of Prof. Vincent Rijmen. Subsequently, I became a postdoctoral research assistant at the Computer Security and Industrial Cryptography group (COSIC) of KU Leuven, Belgium. In 2012, I returned to IAIK coordinating research and teaching activities in cryptography at the department. Since 2017 I am working at Infineon Technologies, Germany.

I am a co-designer of the hash function Grøstl, a finalist in the NIST SHA-3 project, and the authenticated encryption algorithm Ascon that was recently selected by NIST LWC project as new standard for lightweight cryptography.

Editorial board

• Designs, Codes and Cryptography (2017-2022)
• IACR Transactions on Symmetric Cryptology (Co-Editor-in-Chief, 2017-2019)
• IET Information Security (2012-2019)
• J.UCS Journal of Universal Computer Science (2012-2022)

Program committee member

• 2023: CRYPTO, FSE, INSCRYPT, IWSEC, NSS
• 2022: CHES, FSE, IWSEC
• 2021: ASIACRYPT, CECC, IWSEC
• 2020: CECC, CRYPTO, FSE, IWSEC
• 2019: FSE, IWSEC, SECITC
• 2018: CECC, EUROCRYPT, ICISSP, INSCRYPT, ISC, IWSEC, SECITC
• 2017: EUROCRYPT, FSE, ICISC, ICISSP, INSCRYPT, IWSEC, SECITC
• 2016: ARCTICCRYPT, ASIACRYPT, CECC, FSE, ICISC, ICISSP, INDOCRYPT, INSCRYPT, IWSEC
• 2015: CECC, ICISC, ICISSP, INSCRYPT, SAC
• 2014: EUROCRYPT, FSE, ICISC, INSCRYPT
• 2013: FSE, ICISC, INSCRYPT
• 2012: ASIACRYPT, INSCRYPT
• 2011: CANS, ECRYPT II Hash Workshop

Journal refereeing

• Cryptography and Communications
• Cryptologia
• Designs, Codes and Cryptography
• Discrete Mathematics, Algorithms and Applications
• Frontiers of Computer Science
• IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics & Security
• IEEE Transactions on Information Theory
• IEICE Transactions on Fundamentals
• IET Information Security
• Information Processing Letters
• International Journal of Applied Cryptography
• International Journal of Computer Mathematics
• Journal of Cryptographic Engineering
• Journal of Cryptology
• Journal of Logical and Algebraic Methods in Programming
• Journal on Satisfiability, Boolean Modeling and Computation
• Journal of Systems and Software
• The Computer Journal