News:

• Sep. 2022: As the NATO-country director, I am happy to announce that we have succesfully completed our NATO SPS ATC entitled "Intermediate and Advanced Courses on Post-Quantum Cryptography" between 5-11 September 2022 in Baku, Azerbaijan. Here are a few press notes regarding our event for further information: News 1 and News 2.  

• Sep. 2022: I give SİB 532 Kriptografide İleri Konular at Gebze Technical University for the 2022-2023 Fall Term. Please check your student e-mail accounts regularly. 

• Aug. 2022: Our joint work "An Asymptotically Optimal Construction of Almost Affinely Disjoint Subspaces" with Talha Arıkan is published in Finite Fields and Their Applications.

• Jun. 2022: My recent work entitled "A Generalization of the Subfield Construction" is published in International Journal of Information Security Science.

• Jul. 2021: Our joint work "Efficient Generation of Quadratic Cyclotomic Classes for Shortest Quadratic Decompositions of Polynomials" with Eda Tekin is published in Cryptography and Communications. 

• Feb. 2021: I give SİB 533 Simetrik Şifreleme Algoritmaları ve Güvenlik Analizleri at Gebze Technical University for the 2020-2021 Spring Term. Please check your student e-mail accounts regularly. 

• Oct. 2020: I give SİB 532 Kriptografide İleri Konular at Gebze Technical University for the 2020-2021 Fall Term. Please check your student e-mail accounts regularly. 

• Sep. 2020: My popular science article "Kuantum Bilgisayarlar ve Kriptoloji" is available in BİLGEM Teknoloji 10 (September 2020).  

• Feb. 2020: Our joint work "Subspace Packings - Constructions and Bounds" with Tuvi Etzion, Sascha Kurz, and Ferruh Özbudak is published in Designs, Codes and Cryptography.  

• Sep. 2019: I give BGM 501 Kriptolojiye Giriş at Istanbul Şehir University for the 2019-2020 Fall Term. All announcements will be on e-mails. Please check your official e-mail accounts regularly.  

• Dec. 2018: My Ph.D. thesis received METU M. Parlar Thesis of the Year Award.

Research Work: 

Here is a list of my recent research articles:

1. K. Otal and T. Arıkan, "An asymptotically optimal construction of almost affinely disjoint subspaces", Finite Fields and Their Applications 84, 102099 (2022). (doi)

2. K. Otal, "A generalization of the subfield construction", International Journal of Information Security Science, 11(2), 1-11 (2022). (doi) (preprint)

3. K. Otal and E. Tekin, "Efficient generation of quadratic cyclotomic classes for shortest quadratic decompositions of polynomials", Cryptography and Communications 13, 837–845 (2021). (doi)

4. T. Etzion, S. Kurz, K. Otal, and F. Özbudak, "Subspace packings - constructions and bounds", Designs, Codes and Cryptography 88, 1781–1810 (2020). (doi) (preprint)

5. T. Etzion, S. Kurz, K. Otal, and F. Özbudak, "Subspace packings", The 11.th International Workshop on Coding and Cryptography (WCC 2019), Saint-Jacut-de-la-Mer, France, March 31 - April 5, 2019. (preprint) 

6. K. Otal, F. Özbudak, and W. Willems, "Self-duality of generalized twisted Gabidulin codes", Advances in Mathematics of Communications 12, 707–721 (2018). (doi) (preprint)

7. E. Martínez-Moro, K. Otal, and F. Özbudak, "Additive cyclic codes over finite commutative chain rings", Discrete Mathematics 341, 1873–1884 (2018). (doi) (preprint)

8. K. Otal and F. Özbudak, "Some new non-additive maximum rank distance codes", Finite Fields and Their Applications 50, 293–303 (2018). (doi) 

9. K. Otal and F. Özbudak, "Constructions of cyclic subspace codes and maximum rank distance codes", In: M. Greferath, M. Pavcevic, N. Silberstein, and A. Vazquez-Castro (editors), Network Coding and Subspace Designs, Signals and Communication Technology, Springer, 43–66 (2018). (doi)  

10. K. Otal and F. Özbudak, "Cyclic subspace codes via subspace polynomials", Designs, Codes and Cryptography 85, 191–204 (2017). (doi)

11. K. Otal and F. Özbudak, "Additive rank metric codes", IEEE Transactions on Information Theory 63, 164–168 (2017). (doi)

12. K. Otal and F. Özbudak, "Explicit constructions of some non-Gabidulin linear MRD codes", Advances in Mathematics of Communications 10, 589–600 (2016). (doi)

Professional Experience:

• Aug. 2018 – Present: Experienced Senior Researcher, TÜBİTAK BİLGEM, Kocaeli 

• Oct. 2017 – Apr. 2018: Visiting Researcher, Department of Computer Science, Technion, Haifa

• Mar. 2016 – Apr. 2016: Visiting Researcher, Institute of Mathematics, University of Valladolid, Valladolid 

• Sep. 2012 – Aug. 2018: Teaching & Research Assistant, Department of Mathematics, METU, Ankara

• Sep. 2010 – Aug. 2012: Teaching & Research Assistant, Department of Mathematics, TOBB ETU, Ankara

Academic Degrees:

• Sep. 2018: Ph.D. in Cryptography, METU 

• Sep. 2012: M.S. in Mathematics, TOBB ETU

• Sep. 2010: B.S. in Mathematics, TOBB ETU