We are keen to deliver the world-leading ICT R&D. It is pleased to witness that the CRYPTAI lab has contributed excellence, over recent years, in teaching BSc/MSc courses and PhD supervision/graduation (e.g., 4+ BSc group projects, 20+ MSc, 4 PhDs - 3 graduated), securing promising research funding, publishing top-tier conferences and journals (e.g., USENIX, ACM CCS, NDSS, IEEE TDSC), promoting ICT community as chairs via renowned conferences (e.g., ACM ASPLOS/EuroSys, IEEE EuroSP, ESORICS, IEEE CSF), being TPC and associate editors for international conferences (e.g., USENIX, ACM CCS) and journals (e.g., IEEE TDSC, IEEE TAI), putting forward use cases/pilots to various European countries via projects (e.g., TANGO, ASSURED). I am very proud of closely working with my team members (all MSc, PhDs and post-docs) and the group members.  

The CRYPTAI lab was found in 2021, and its vision is to pave the way to advancement of ICT development. The lab, led by Dr. Liang, focuses on the R&D on: (1) data and theoretical cryptographic mechanisms, in particular, searchable encryption, updatable encryption, lattice-based encryption/signature (post-quantum cryptography); (2) theoretical machine/federated learning; and (3) blockchain (e.g., smart contract, oracles) development. 

The lab is mainly supported by the funding from H2020, Horizon Europe and other external grants. And the lab members have published excellent research works in the related A* conferences (e.g., ACM CCS, USENIX, NDSS, CVPR, SIGMETRICS) and top-tier international journals (e.g., IEEE TDSC, IEEE TII, IEEE TC, IEEE IC, IEEE TIFS). 

The lab is designed to provide supportive, positive and diverse research atmosphere, help young academics grow, become decent researchers and advance their careers. We are able to provide research excellence, e.g., training to publish top-tier journals and A* conferences, proposal writing skills, chances of academic visit, courses on university teaching qualification and scientific writing (thanks to the university), teaching assistant activities, other academic trainings. All members of the lab so far have abilities to independently publish excellent research works, prepare funding proposal, handle multiple external projects, and cover teaching assistant activities.   

We are currently working with self-motivated and talented MSc, PhD/doctoral students and post-docs. If you are interested in joining the team, please feel free to send us your CV, transcripts, degree, English certificates.   

• The group supports the organization of ACM CCS 2026.

• Several new doctoral candidates and post-doc join the team. Welcome Cuong, Yanzhe, Roberto, Shuo and Renyi.  

• Kaitai was invited to present a keynote related to privacy-preserving FL for ProvSec 2025. 

• Rui Wang presented a keynote for ACNS 2025 @SiMLA. 

• Kaitai presented a keynote for ACNS 2024 @SCI. 

• CRYPTAI supported the host of EuroSys + ASPLOS 2025 in Rotterdam. 

• CRYPTAI supported the organization of IEEE CSF 2024 in Enschede. 

• Kaitai presented to Data Sharing Festival (The Hague) related to PETs in data sharing in The Hague.  

• Kaitai presented a keynote encrypted database for ProvSec 2023. 

• Kaitai gave a keynote for Scisec 2023.  

• ASSURED scientific workshop to present advanced DSSE technique and spoke to renowned researchers. 

• CRYPTAI supported the organization of ACM ASPLOS+EuroSys 2025, IEEE Euro S&P 2023, ESORICS 2023, SecureComm2022. 

• Kaitai delivered two talks in ONE Conference 2022 which is a prime of European even with 2000+ attendees.

We are seeking highly motivated Post-Doctoral, Research Fellows and PhDs to join the team. The ideal candidates should have strong backgrounds in computer science and math.

Please note that the university may have a background censor for PhD and Post-Doc applicants. 

• For Those Interested in Post-doc, Junior/Senior RA Positions: 

Responsibilities:

• Conduct implementation on cutting-edge theoretical crypto algorithms. 

• Design post-quantum theoretical algorithms. 

• Collaborate with other team members to ensure successful delivery.

Requirements:

• PhD in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or related field. 

• Sufficient knowledge of cryptography. 

• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills. 

• Excellent communication and teamwork skills. 

Length:

At least a 2-year contract. 

Language:

English.

(Requirement in English - applicants must prove English proficiency by: i. graduated from/worked/be working for academic institutions in EU, Canada, USA, Singapore, Canada, Australia, New Zealand; or ii. obtain a valid IELTS or TOEFL certificates; or iii. publications on top-tier conferences and journals, e.g., A/A* conferences, Q1 journals). 

Selection Criteria:

• Related field of PhD degree

• Publication's impact: A/A* conferences, Q1 journals

• English proficiency 

• Project experiences and programming skills

• Other factors, e.g., personality, university, research ability, communication, reference letter, motivation.  

• For Those Interested in PhD positions: 

Responsibilities:

• Conduct research on theoretical cryptography, or theoretical AI. 

• Deliver research works to top-tier conferences and journals.

Requirements:

• MSc in Computer Science, Math, or related field. 

• Some experience with programming languages. 

• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills. 

• Great communication and teamwork. 

Length: 

a 3-4-year contract. 

Language:

English 

• Turku require IELTS 6.5 in general and writing above 6.0; or TOEFL above 90. 

• Valid English certificate of IELTS or TOEFL must be presented; without it, applicants will not be selected. 

Selection criteria: 

• Related field of MSc degree

• Publication's track record: A/A* conferences, Q1 journals

• English proficiency 

• transcript and university ranking 

• Other factors, e.g., personality, research ability, communication, reference letter, motivation.  

• How to Apply for the above positions

Please send CV, PhD/MSc transcripts, degrees, English certificate, a publication list and 2-page research and motivation letter to my email address via your affiliation email, or directly to the application links. We welcome applications from individuals of related backgrounds. Applicants without English certificate and without using official university email could be skipped by selection.  

Note as a post-doc or a PhD you can be provided by the followings:

(1) International academic collaborations. 

(2) Opportunities of participating into various domestic and international ICT projects. 

(3) Being trained to deliver world-leading research works and publish them to top-tier venues.   

(4) Flexible and supportive working surroundings. 

(5) Competitive salary and benefits package, relocation supports, retirement saving plan, vacation and summer bonus, and free academic related trainings.  

Since 2020, the following projects (Dr. Liang as PI) are the main funding sources supporting the CRYPTAI Lab. 

ARGENTIC: envisions a future of autonomous, human-aligned AI that thrive across distributed infrastructures. By prioritizing explainability and strict adherence to the AI Act and GDPR, we deliver measurable sustainability, significantly reducing energy consumption compared to cloud-centric models. 

ORQESTRA aims to provide efficient designs of Post-Quantum Crypto (PQC) algorithms and abstractions addressing the current need towards bridging the gap between the foundational primitives and hard mathematical problems of PQC. 

Horizon Europe TENSOR (completed): provide Police Authorities a platform that facilitates evidence extraction, sharing, and storage in cross border environments, allowing them to share best practices in an automated, robust, and scalable manner. 

Horizon Europe TANGO (completed): establish a stronger cross-sector data sharing, in a citizen-centric and trust manner, by developing innovative solutions while addressing environmental degradation and climate change challenges. The overall outcome is a novel platform exhibiting the following capabilities: user-friendly, trust, fair, transparent, accountable and environmentally sustainable data management, having at its core technology components for distributed, and environmentally sustainable data collection, processing, analysis, sharing and storage.  

Horizon Europe REWIRE (completed): provide a holistic management framework that can manage IoT environments, capitalizing on trust mechanisms that exploit emerging technologies based on Formal verification, Theorem Proofs, Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence.

Horizon Europe MLSysOps (completed): design, implement and evaluate a complete AI-controlled framework for autonomic end-to-end system management across the full cloud-edge continuum. MLSysOps will employ a hierarchical AI architecture to interface with the underlying resource management and application deployment/orchestration mechanisms of the continuum. Energy efficiency and utilization of green energy, performance, low latency, efficient, and tier-less storage, cross-layer orchestration including resource-constrained devices, are key elements of MLSysOps addressed using ML models.  

H2020 IRIS (completed): design and implement data encryption techniques on consortium blockchain.  

H2020 ASSURED (completed): data management and sharing via the combination of cryptographic tools and blockchain technique.  

Here are a few publications since 2020. Note publication quality is on Google Scholar top publication venue, core conference/journal ranking and CSRankings.   

• Compiling Oblivious Schemes Against Coercion: The Anamorphic Construction, accepted by ACM CCS (A* conference) 2026. 

• Athena: Accelerating KeySwitch and Bootstrapping for Fully Homomorphic Encryption on CUDA GPU, ESORICS (A conference) 2025. 

• CCA-1 Secure Updatable Encryption with Adaptive Security, Asiacrypt (A conference) 2023. 

• MVOC: A Lighter Multi-Client Verifiable Outsourced Computation with Hybrid Homomorphic Encryption, ESORICS (A conference) 2022. 

•  Generic construction of threshold ring signatures and lattice-based instantiations, Designs, Codes and Cryptography. 

Post-doc:

If you are interested in doing R&D projects in our lab since 2020, please feel free to contact us. Some concrete topics are as follows:

• Decentralized blockchain oracles by TEE.

• Robust federated learning. 

• IoT blockchain via cryptography.

• Searchable encryption.

Some completed/ongoing MSc projects: 

L. Franschman: Lattice based zero-knowledge proofs for post-quantum crypto. 

M. Khattat: Improving the scalability of FROST. 

B. Schaick: Introducing Privacy-Enhancing Technologies to Blockchains.  

J. Thomas : forward and backward secure searchable encryption (with Dr. Florian Hanh, Twente)

Bachelor projects: smart contract, NIST post-quantum and federated learning. 

K. Tjiam, C. Paulsen, R. Stefanov, C. Slager, S. Orth

M. Soos, R. Minea, A. Titu, H. Culea

L. Dekhuijzen, A. Feldman, G. Mazzola, M. C. Enache

F. Joosen, C. Park, M. Alrefaai, A. Kahawati, J. Sanchez