ABU DHABI - Technology Innovation Institute (TII), the applied research pillar of Abu Dhabi’s Advanced Technology Research Council (ATRC), today announced that its Cryptography Research Centre (CRC) has partnered with several international universities with the aim of advancing breakthroughs in the field of cryptography.

The Cryptography Research Centre signed the partnership agreements with Ruhr-University Bochum (Germany), Radboud University (The Netherlands), Khalifa University (UAE), University of Milan (Italy), Polytechnic University of Turin (Italy), and Federal University of Santa Catarina (Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina) (Brazil).

CRC had earlier this year announced that it had partnered with Yale University (USA). CRC has also co-authored a Springer Publishing book on Hardware Architectures for Post Quantum Digital Signature Schemes with New York University (USA).

The collaborations follow a series of innovation announcements at TII since the first Advanced Technology Research Council board meeting in August 2020.

Speaking on the partnership announcements, Dr Najwa Aaraj, Chief Researcher at Cryptography Research Centre, said: "We look forward to working with peers from our global academic partners. Our researchers at the Cryptographic Research Centre work on advanced cryptographic algorithms and constructions. Together we will be conducting disruptive research and advancing breakthroughs across the field of cryptography and its sub-disciplines. We are confident that this research will lead to significant residual benefits for society."

The partnership with Ruhr-University Bochum aims to design and implement privacy-preserving cloud computing and secure data processing schemes while the partnership with Radboud University will target lightweight cryptography and aims to develop software and hardware secure implementations.

The research partnership with Khalifa University will focus on designing an enhanced TESLA protocol for the internet of things (IoT), while the second project aims to design a secure field programmable gate array involving reconfigurable post-quantum cryptography schemes and machine learning models.

Furthermore, the collaboration with University of Milan focuses on the analysis of algebraic models of HMAC-SHA-1 and on the design of automated tools. Meanwhile, the partnership with Polytechnic University of Turin will target the cryptanalysis of ARX ciphers from different points of view.

The partnership with Federal University of Santa Catarina (Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina - UFSC), in Florianpolis, Brazil, focuses on the study of hybrid protocol, covering key establishment and digital signature, considering the combination of currently used algorithms and post-quantum algorithms.

The partnership with Yale University, announced by TII in January, targets the intersection of post-quantum cryptography and hardware implementations, as well as a second project which studies of the robustness, explainability and optimised hardware design of Spiking Neural Networks, as part of TII’s interest in advancing the field of neuromorphic computing

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