Example Possible PhD Projects

We present a list of possible PhD projects.

If you are interested in any of the following ideas then you should contact the relevant member of staff, then after determining a suitable supervisor you should officially apply.

For details of how to apply and other information see our main PhD admissions page.

Select a research area to prune the list below;

Staff Member	Research Groups	Projects
Dr Elisabeth Oswald	Cryptography	My primary interest is in applied cryptography and cryptanalysis. Most of my research focuses around aspects of side-channel attacks, in particular power analysis attacks, which are the most researched area in side-channel attacks today. I have worked with a number of students on Bsc, Msc, and PhD level during my time in Austria, and also here in Bristol. I am co-author of the currently only book about power analysis attacks, I have provided training on this subject for various organisations, and I have been involved in running the flagship conference in the field of cryptographic hardware and embedded systems (CHES) in the last two years. I am interested in working with people whose ambition is to combine theory with practice, who take pleasure in trying out things in practice, and who like to contribute to a small team of experts.
Dr Dan Page	Cryptography	I am interested mainly in practical aspects of cryptography; roughly speaking this covers implementation of cryptographic primitives (in hardware and/or software) and physical security (side-channel and fault attacks). My previous work has focussed on: Implementation using novel processors and/or hardware (e.g. implementation of cryptography on GPUs, multi-core and SIMD implementation of pairings). Novel side-channel attacks and countermeasures (e.g. non-deterministic processor designs, attacks using cache memory as a side-channel). Domain specific compiler/language support for cryptography (e.g. optimisation of ECC, automatic countermeasures again side-channel attack). I am also interested in the design of (general purpose) processors, compilers and programming languages.
Prof Nigel Smart	Cryptography	I am interested in the interplay between theoretical and practical cryptography. Previous and current PhD projects include: Efficient Pairing Implementations We have worked on low level implementation of pairings, as well as developed higher level algorithms such as the Ate-pairing Provable Security of Schemes We have developed concepts such as wild-carded IBE, cryptographic workflow and created the SK-KEM ID-based encryption primitive currently being standardised by the IEEE. Protocol Analysis A current student is looking at developing security models for protocols such as TLS and various anti-DDoS schemes. ZK Proofs and MPC Via a recent EU grant we are now looking at applying our practical experience to areas such as ZK-proofs and Multi-Party Computation
Dr Martijn Stam	Cryptography
Dr Bogdan Warinschi	Cryptography	I am interested in foundations of security, mainly in proofs of cryptographic systems. In particular I work on: Computational soundness: This is a meta-theory that tries to bridge the gap between two entirely fundamentaly approaches for proving security of cryptographic systems one based on symbolic models, and one based on complexity and computability theory. Models and proofs for complex primitives: Here we aim to construct frameworks where interesting and useful cryptographic primitives can be designed and analyzed. Examples of such primitives include group and proxy signatures. Symbolic analysis: I am also interested in this area of research which is concerned with designing automated algorithms for proving security of systems.

Staff can edit their project ideas here.