Biography

In February of 2009, Peter Ryan took up a position as full Professor of Applied Security at the University of Luxembourg. He has over 20 years of experience in cryptography, information assurance and formal verification. He pioneered the application of process algebras to modelling and analysis of secure systems, presenting the first process algebra (CSP) formulation of non-intereference at the Computer Security Foundations Workshop in 1989. In 1993, while at DRA, he initiated and led the "Modelling and Analysis of Security Protocols" research project that developed the CSP and model-checking approach to the analysis of security protocols. This project broke away from the trend of employing bestoke frameworks such as the epistemic BAN-logic and used mainstream formal methods notations and tools. Notable achievements of this project were the discovery by Gavin Lowe of the now famous flaw in the Needham-Schroeder Public Key protocol that had lain undiscovered for around 17 years.

He has published extensively on cryptography, cryptographic protocols, mathematical models of computer security and, most recently, high assurance voting systems. He is the creator of Prêt à Voter, Pretty Good Democracy (with Vanessa Teague) and OpenVote (with Feng Hao) verifiable voting schemes. Also with Feng Hao he has been developing and analysing a novel Password Authenticated Key Establishment Protocol J-PAKE.

Prior to joining the University of Luxembourg he was a Professor of Computing Science at Newcastle University. He has worked at GCHQ, the Defence Research Agency, the Stanford Research Institute in Cambridge and the Software Engineering Institute, CMU Pittsburgh.

He holds a PhD in mathematical physics from the University of London.

Peter Ryan has been on programme committees of numerous prestigious security conferences, notably: IEEE Security and Privacy, IEEE Computer Security Foundations Workshop, the European Symposium On Research In Computer Security (ESORICS), WITS (Workshop on Issues in Security). He was Chair of WITS’04 (Workshop on Issues in the Theory of Security) and Co-chair of ESORICS’04, co-chair of Frontiers of Electronic Elections FEE 2005, Chair WOTE 2007 (Workshop On Trustworthy Elections). From 1999 to 2007 he was the Chair of the ESORICS Steering Committee. He is a Fellow of the BCS and IMA.

His book "Modelling and Analysis of Security Protocols" is available online: http://www.computing.surrey.ac.uk/personal/st/S.Schneider/books/MASP.pdf

More information about Peter can be found at his web site at the University of Luxembourg: http://wwwen.uni.lu/research/fstc/computer_science_and_communications_research_unit/members/peter_ryan

Research Interests

Information assurance, cryptography, cryptographic protocols, modelling and analysis of secure systems and security policies, analysis of information flow, cryptographic voting schemes, quantum cryptography and soico-technical aspects of security.