Prof. Dr.-Ing. Tibor Jager

About

I am a full (W3) professor of cryptography and IT security at University of Wuppertal since 2019 and was an associate (W2) professor at Paderborn University from 2016-2019. From 2011 to 2016 I was a postdoctoral researcher at Ruhr University Bochum in the group of Jörg Schwenk and at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in the group of Dennis Hofheinz (now at ETH Zürich). I have visited CWI Amsterdam (Eike Kiltz, now at RUB), University of Maryland (Jonathan Katz), Bristol University (Martijn Stam, now at Simula UiB, Norway), NTNU Trondheim (Colin Boyd and Kristian Gjøsteen), and Royal Holloway, University of London (Kenny Paterson, now at ETH Zürich) for research stays. I completed my PhD in 2011 at Ruhr University Bochum under the supervision of Jörg Schwenk.

I was an invited member of the first IETF Crypto Review Panel from 2016 to 2019, a member of the editorial board of Applicable Algebra in Engineering, Communication and Computing (AAECC) from 2014 to 2019, and founding director of the Competence Center Digital Security at the Software Innovation Campus Paderborn (SICP). I am a board member of the Interdisciplinary Center for Machine Learning and Data Analytics (IZMD) and a partner of the SI-Lab at University of Paderborn.

Publications

My publications can be found on this page.

Research Projects

Current

• 2022-2025: Resilience Meets Secure Networked Control, DFG Research Grant within DFG Priority Programme Resilience in Connected Worlds – Mastering Failures, Overload, Attacks, and the Unexpected, in cooperation with Prof. Moritz Schulze Darup, TU Dortmund
• 2021-2024: Foundations of Secure Storage for Encrypted Instant Messaging, DFG research grant
• 2021-2024: Foundations of Smart Encryption, DFG Research Grant
• 2019-2024: Theoretically-Sound Real-World Cryptography (REWOCRYPT), ERC Starting Grant

Completed

• 2022-2023: Strong E-Mail Security – SES, NRW Research Program on Human Centered Systems Security (NERD II), in cooperation with Prof. Jörg Schwenk, Ruhr University Bochum
• 2020-2023: Automated Discovery of Side-Channel Attacks with Machine Learning (AutoSCA), Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF)
• 2019-2023: Security and Robustness in On-The-Fly Computing, DFG Collaborative Research Centre (Sonderforschungsbereich) 901
• 2018-2022: Privacy and Security of Instant-Messaging, NRW Research Program on Human Centered Systems Security (NERD NRW)
• 2017-2020: Foundations of Low-Latency Key Exchange, DFG Research Grant
• 2017-2020: Secure Time-Lock Encryption (REZEIVER), Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF)
• 2016-2019: Tight Reductions in Cryptography, DFG Research Grant

Selected Program Committees

• ACM CCS in 2016, 2018, 2019, 2022, 2023
• IACR CRYPTO in 2020, 2022, 2024
• IACR EUROCRYPT in 2016, 2022, 2023 (Area Program Chair), 2024
• IACR ASIACRYPT in 2023
• IACR PKC in 2013, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2025 (Program Chair)
• IEEE Security and Privacy (Oakland) in 2021, 2022

PhD Students

Current

• Tom Neuschulten, research topic: Post-quantum secure protocols for modern applications
• Christian Holler, research topic: Post-quantum cryptography for secure storage
• Raphael Heitjohann, research topic: Foundations of Smart Encryption and Its Applications
• Jonas von der Heyden, research topic: Cryptographic Secure Computation for Smart Energy Networks

Completed

• 2024: Dr.-Ing. Tobias Handirk, thesis title: On Real-World Cryptographic Protocols for End-to-End Encrypted Backups and Key Confirmation. Tobias' PhD thesis was nominated for the GI Dissertation Award 2025.
• 2024: Dr.-Ing. Pascal Bemmann, thesis title: On Practical Subversion-Resilience
• 2023: Dr.-Ing. Denis Diemert, thesis title: On the Tight Security of the Transport Layer Security (TLS) Protocol Version 1.3
• 2023: Dr.-Ing. Jan Drees, thesis title: How Machine Learning Enables Automated Side-Channel Detection
• 2021: Dr.-Ing. David Niehues, thesis title: More Efficient Techniques for Adaptively-Secure Cryptography. David has received the Gründerpreis+ Award for Digital Innovations of the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Action in 2022.
• 2021: Dr.-Ing. Peter Chvojka, thesis title: Time Reveals The Truth - More Efficient Constructions of Timed Cryptographic Primitives
• 2020: Dr.-Ing. Rafael Kurek, thesis title: Efficient Cryptographic Constructions with Strong Security Guarantees
• 2020: Dr.-Ing. Kai Gellert, thesis title: Construction and Security Analysis of 0-RTT Protocols. Kai’s dissertation was awarded with the of the Science Award 2020 of the Foundation for Privacy and Data Security (Gesellschaft für Datenschutz und Datensicherheit e. V.)
• 2015: Dr. Christoph Bader, thesis title: On the Possibility and Impossibility of Tight Reductions in Cryptography, finished in Summer 2015 (formal supervisor: Prof. Jörg Schwenk)
• 2015: Dr. Yong Li, thesis title: Design and Analysis of Cryptographic Protocols, finished in Summer 2015 (formal supervisor: Prof. Jörg Schwenk)

Honors and Awards

• 2025 Program Co-Chair of PKC 2025, the 28th International Conference on Practice and Theory in Public-Key Cryptography
• 2024 Distinguished PC Member award of EUROCRYPT 2024, 43rd Annual International Conference on the Theory and Applications of Cryptographic Techniques
• 2018 ERC Starting Grant on Theoretically-Sound Real-World Cryptography
• 2018 Teaching Award of Paderborn University, university-wide award for "Innovation and Quality in Teaching".
• 2016 TRON Best Contribution to IETF Award, in recognition of outstanding research contributions benefitting the IETF TLS working group efforts to develop TLS 1.3, presented at the TLS 1.3 - Ready or Not? (TRON) Workshop, February 21, 2016, San Diego, CA, USA.
• 2016 Selected member of the Crypto Review Panel, expert committee of the Internet Research Task Force (IRTF).
• 2009 Internship Stipend, Centrum Wiskunde en Informatica (CWI), Amsterdam. Funding for excellent PhD students for a 3-month internship at the CWI.
• 2008 Innovator Award, Ruhr University Bochum and rubitec GmbH, for the invention of a Browser-based single sign-on protocol. Together with Sebastian Gajek, Mark Manulis, and Jörg Schwenk.
• 2007 Faculty Award, “outstanding graduate” of the study course Master of Science in IT Security. Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, Ruhr University Bochum.
• 2006 Dobbertin Award, awarded for the solution of the HGI Crypto Challenge 2006: Cryptanalysis of a DES-Variant. Horst Görtz Institute for IT Security, Ruhr University Bochum.