Speakers

Clémence Bouvier is a researcher at Inria, working at the LORIA laboratory in Nancy since December 2024. She completed her PhD at Sorbonne University in 2023 under the supervision of Anne Canteaut and Léo Perrin, focusing on the design and security analysis of Arithmetization-Oriented Primitives. She then held a postdoctoral position at Ruhr University Bochum in Gregor Leander's group. Her research interests lie in symmetric cryptography and discrete mathematics. Her contributions cover both practical and theoretical aspects with publications in Crypto or journals like DCC, ToSC or TCHES.

Patrick Derbez is a researcher at Inria affiliated with the University of Rennes, where he also served as an associate professor from 2015 to 2024. He earned his PhD in 2013 from ENS Paris, with a dissertation on meet-in-the-middle attacks on AES and related cryptographic primitives. Prior to his current position, he was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Luxembourg from 2013 to 2015. His research focuses on symmetric-key cryptography, with particular emphasis on cryptanalysis. A central theme of his work is the development of automated tools to evaluate cryptographic constructions and identify optimal attacks across a range of scenarios. His contributions have been published in top-tier cryptography venues such as Crypto and Eurocrypt, and he is notably the author of several of the most advanced attacks on AES to date.

Pierre-Alain Fouque is a Full Professor at the University of Rennes, where he has been a faculty member since 2012. He completed his PhD at Université Paris Diderot in 2001 on security proof and Threshold Cryptography under the supervision of Jacques Stern. Then, he worked at DCSSI with Antoine Joux during two years before joining the Computer Science Department of the Ecole normale supérieure in 2003 as an Assistant Professor. He became a Junior member of the Institut Universitaire de France (IUF) in 2013 and he is a Senior member of IUF since 2023. His research interests include post-quantum cryptography, cryptanalysis of symmetric-key primitives, of public-key cryptosystems, side-channel attacks, and real-world cryptosystems. He was a designer of the Falcon post-quantum signature scheme, which was selected by NIST in 2022. He has been co-Program Chair of CHES in 2019 and Eurocrypt in 2025. Recently, he has been involved in the design of quantum algorithms. His contributions to the field have been recognized through publications in significant venues in both security and cryptography like CCS, QIP, and Crypto.

Stjepan Picek is a full professor at the University of Zagreb, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing, Croatia. He also holds an associate professor position at Radboud University, Nijmegen, and an adjunct professor position at the University of Bergen, Norway. Before that, he was an assistant professor at TU Delft and a postdoctoral researcher at MIT, USA, and KU Leuven, Belgium. Stjepan completed PhD in computer science in 2015 at the University of Zagreb, Croatia and Radboud University, The Netherlands. In 2024, he finished a PhD in mathematics at the University of Paris 8, France. His research interests include security and cryptography, machine learning, and evolutionary computation. To date, Stjepan has given more than 50 invited talks and published more than 180 refereed papers. He is a program committee member and reviewer for a number of conferences and journals and a member of several professional societies. His work has been featured in the mainstream media and on popular technology blogs. He is a member of ELLIS and a Fellow of the Young Academy of Europe.

Dr. Douglas Stinson obtained his PhD in Mathematics 1981 from the University of Waterloo. He held postdoctoral and faculty positions at the University of Manitoba (1981-1989); the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (1990-1998); and the University of Waterloo (1998-2019), where he was a University Professor from 2013-2019. Following his retirement in 2019, Dr. Stinson is a Professor Emeritus in the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo. He is also an Adjunct Research Professor in the School of Mathematics and Statistics at Carleton University. Dr. Stinson's research interests include combinatorial mathematics (especially combinatorial design theory and coding theory) and cryptography (especially unconditionally secure cryptography). He is the author of almost 400 research papers and books, including the best-selling textbook Cryptography Theory and Practice, which is now in its fourth edition. Dr. Stinson has supervised 17 PhD students and 16 Masters students. He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2011. Dr. Stinson also has received the 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award from CS-Can | Info-Can, the national non-profit organization dedicated to representing computer science and the interests of the discipline across Canada.