IACR 2022

I am running for Director of the IACR in the 2022 elections.

My short statement.

I have served the IACR since 1997 as director, vice-president and president. I would like to contribute my experience to further develop the IACR, with as key points maintaining scientific quality, open availability of scientific results, supporting students and exploring how our publications and events can be strengthened and expanded.

Below my longer statement.

The IACR is a community with a rich history and a promising future. I have joined the IACR in 1989 and I have attended 34 Eurocrypts and Cryptos, 17 of the past 20 Asiacrypts, 27 FSEs, and 18 CHES conferences. I had the pleasure to serve on the IACR Board since 1997 as Director, Vice-President and President; I have attended all the full day Board of Directors meetings (held before Crypto and Eurocrypt) in the last 26 years and almost all the 2-hour monthly meetings held since the beginning of the pandemic. I am currently serving as program chair liaison. Based on my track record, I would like to receive your support to serve the IACR and the community as Director.

We should focus on:
    1) scientific quality of conferences and publications,
    2) making further progress towards open access publishing,
    3) enhancing international and student participation,
    4) protecting free research in cryptology,
    5) maintaining strong links between academic and industrial research.

Service:

program chair: CHES 2011, Eurocrypt 2000, FSE 1994

co-editor in chief of Transactions on Symmetric Cryptology and program co-chair of FSE 2017

general chair: FSE 2009, FSE 1994

member of Editorial Board Journal of Cryptology (1997-2012)

program committee member of 64 IACR Conferences and Workshops

member of FSE steering committee and past member of the CHES steering committee

observer in Asiacrypt steering committee (2004-2013)

Honours:

fellow of the IACR (2015)
IACR Distinguished Lecturer (2016)
RSA Award for Excellence in the Field of Mathematics (2014)
Kristian Beckman Award IFIP TC 11 (2016)
ESORICS Outstanding Research Award (2017)
Member of the Academia Europaea

Professional activities:

in charge of research group COSIC
project manager of ECRYPT: European Network of Excellence on Cryptography (2004-2013) and the follow-up projects ECRYPT-CSA (2016-2018) and ECRYPT.NET (2016-2019) (the first Real World Crypto Workskhop in Cambridge was organized in the framework of and sponsored by the ECRYPT project).

I am willing to work with the community in order to explore how we can improve our publication models to better serve the interest of our members. IACR has been conservative and careful in adopting changes, and I see this as a good thing. We should try to move forward in a way that we keep the strong elements of our current approach and benefit from the innovations offered by the web. I have helped introduce the hybrid journal/conference model for ToSC/FSE that has also been adopted by CHES; in the first year of ToSC I have served as co-editor in chief. This model has proven to be very successful for both events.

The IACR has a long term agenda to enhance international participation and to enable researchers in all continents to benefit from and contribute to our community. We should support new initiatives in this direction and think of new ways to reach out to those who are currently not able to participate.

While the core business of IACR is research, the organization also has a broader mission ("to serve public welfare") and a social responsibility. We cannot escape the fact that the role of our science in protecting society and its citizens is being debated. I believe that it is important for IACR and its members to speak out when human rights and core values of our societies are at risk.

Bart Preneel