Postdoctoral researcher Jorge Toro-Pozo was awarded with the ERCIM STM PhD thesis award for the excellent scientific quality of his thesis « Computational and Symbolic Analysis of Distance-Bounding Protocols ». The ceremony took place during the 16th International Workshop on Security and Trust Management on 17 September 2020 at the University of Surrey, Guildford (United Kingdom). Congratulations to Jorge!
While receiving his PhD in Computer Science at the University of Luxembourg in May 2019, under the supervision of Prof. Sjouke Mauw and the scientific advisory of Dr. Rolando Trujillo, Jorge Toro-Pozo was awarded with the best PhD thesis award of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Luxembourg. This year, Jorge receives the STM 2020 best prize from the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM). This award has been established to highlight the best PhD thesis in the field of security and trust management, as well as to increase the visibility of the young researchers within the ERCIM scientific community and in the scientific community in general.
Jorge’s Toro-Pozo’s PhD thesis focused on the development of formal models that can be used to systematically analyse distance bounding protocols. “Distance bounding protocols have a wide range of applications, including access control, keyless entry systems for cars, transport ticketing, and NFC contactless payment”, explains Jorge. “Using the developed models, we identify novel as well as already known proximity-related security shortcomings, including issues on industrial protocols used by companies like Mastercard and NXP.”
“Some of the results in his thesis are groundbreaking and have already influenced established researchers in the field of distance-bounding protocols”, comments Prof. Sjouke Mauw, PhD Supervisor of Jorge’s thesis. “He has developed a new way of looking at such protocols that is at the same time very simple and highly surprising”.
The International Workshop on Security and Trust Management was seeking submissions from academia, industry, and government presenting novel research on all theoretical and practical aspects of security and trust in ICTs. The prize has been awarded annually since 2008 by the ERCIM Working Group on Security and Trust Management (STM), which belongs to the European Research Consortium in Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM). STM 2020 was the sixteenth workshop in this series, which aims at promoting the scientific growth of young researchers interested in the field of security and trust management.
“I am greatly proud and honoured to be awarded this year’s ERCIM STM PhD thesis award. This recognition rewards the hard work that we all put into the development of my PhD, including the invaluable professional and personal support my supervisors provided me during my time at the University of Luxembourg”, concludes Jorge.
Jorge Toro-Pozo is now postdoctoral researcher in Prof. Dr. David Basin’s Information Security Group, within the Department of Computer Science at ETH Zürich. His research focuses on formal verification of security protocols.
For more information: https://jorgetp.github.io