Dr Sushmita Ruj | UNSW Research

Keywords

classical to quantum transition

Fields of Research (FoR)

Cryptography, Cybersecurity and privacy, Cyberphysical systems and internet of things, Cloud computing, Data security and protection, Data and information privacy, Privacy and data rights, Quantum technologies

SEO tags

Information and Communication Services

Communication Networks and Services not elsewhere classified

Electronic Information Storage and Retrieval Services

Biography

Senior Lecturer

I am a Senior Lecturer in the School of Computer Science and Engineering, UNSW, Sydney. My primary research interests are in applied cryptography, post-quantum cryptography, cybersecurity, blockchains and data privacy. I design practical, efficient and provably secure protocols that can be deployed in real-life applications. My interests are in critical infrastructure including smart grids and cloud, ad hoc networks and data sharing frameworks. As the world builds stronger capability in quantum technology, I am trying to design quantum safe algorithms to transition to a safer Internet. Recently, I have also been interested in ethical aspects of cybersecurity and legal and regulatory aspects around data sharing.

My aim is to carry out impactful research for the benefit of the society and mentor students to be critical thinkers and leaders. I love to work with my students and collaborate with the government, academia and industry. This has made research a very enriching experience for me. I have collaborated with researchers across five continents and have delivered over 80 technical lectures around the world. I have won several competitive grants like Samsung GRO Award, NetApp Faculty Fellowship, Cisco Academic Grant and IBM Research grant. I am a senior member of ACM and IEEE.

I am on the editorial boards of Elsevier Journal Pervasive and Mobile Computing (PMC) and Elsevier Journal of Information Security and Applications (JISA). I have served as Program Co- Chairs for ACISP 2021 and Indocrypt 2020. Besides, I have served on the program committees of many conferences like ACM ASIACCS, ACNS, ICDCS, IEEE ICBC, IEEE Globecom, IEEE ICC to name a few. I served as a member of the working group on “Blockchain For Cybersecurity” working group of the National Blockchain Roadmap of Australia and as a member of Trans-Tasman Initiative on Post Quantum Cryptography research.

Prior to joining UNSW, I was a Senior Research Scientist in CSIRO's Data61 (2019-2022) and Assistant and Associate Professor at Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata. I started my academic career as an Assistant Professor at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Indore.

I completed a Ph. D. and Master's Degree in Computer Science from Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata. My Ph. D. thesis was about Cryptographic Key Management. My Master's thesis was about Graph Ramsey Theory and got me an Erdos Number of 2. Many years ago, I was an undergradate student in Computer Science in Indian Institute of Science, Education and Research (Erstwhile B.E. College, Shibpur), the second oldest Engineering College in India.

I was born in Durgapur, a beautiful, quiet Indian city famous for its Steel Plant. I went to Carmel School, Steel Township and DAV Model School.

Link to my researcher profile: https://research.unsw.edu.au/people/sushmita-ruj

My Grants

Selected Grants:

- Project Lead, “Automatic Assessment and Protection of Personal Information for Data Sharing”, Cyber Security CRC, WA, Government, NSW Government and Australian Computer Society. 2020-2022.

- Chief Investigator, “ Securing Cloud Storage”, Funding Agency, Cisco, Inc, USA, 2017 - 2019.

- Chief Investigator, “Auditing Schemes for Cloud Storage”. Funding agency, NetApp Inc, USA. 2016 -2019.

- Chief Investigator, “Study on Security and Privacy of Internet of Things (IoT)”. Funding agency, Samsung Electronics, Korea, 2014-2016.

-Chief Investigator (India Side), “Computational Aspects of Mathematical Design and Analysis of Secure Communication Systems Based on Cryptographic Primitives”, Indo-Japan Cooperative Science Program. Funding Agency DST, Govt. of India and JSPS, Japan. 2014-2016.

My Research Activities

Applied Cryptography, Post Quantum Cryptography, Blockchains, Data privacy, Cybersecurity.

My Research Supervision

Supervision keywords

classical to quantum transition

Areas of supervision

I am looking for Ph. D. students and Masters by Research students to work on interesting problems on (but not limited to) the following topics:

Applied cryptography

- Proofs of Storage

- (Verifiable ) Computation and Search on Encrypted Data

- Cryptographic Key Management

Blockchains

- Layer-2 scaling solutions

- Interoperability of Blockchains

- Decentralised Storage on Blockchains

- Attacks and defences

Post Quantum Cryptography (PQC)

- PQC from Symmetric Key primitives: Signatures, Zero-knowledge proofs

- PQC algorithms for Blockchains

- Deployment of PQC algorithms for securing the Internet

Data Privacy

- Privacy Enhancing technologies (mostly using Cryptography)

- Looking at privacy laws and regulations from the Technological lens

Applications

- Cloud Security

- Internet of Things Security and Privacy

- Industrial Internet of Things Security and Privacy

It's a long list but there are subtle connections between many of these problems. All the problems are motivated by real-world problems in emerging domains. The essence of many of these problems is proofs and verifiability. We use a wide range of tools from Data structures, Discrete Mathematics, Coding theory and Cryptography. If you have an exciting problem that you don't see in this list of topics, please share it with me and get me interested.

Prospective students should be self-motivated with a strong mathematical inclination and strong computer science background. Honesty, sincerity and perseverance are very important to me and should be a priority for the students. To know more about my work please visit my Google Scholar profile and DBLP. You are also welcome to talk to my students for their feedback. Please drop me an email (with your CV) and let me know why you are interested and what you are interested in.

If you are an undergrad or masters student at UNSW, please feel free to drop me an email to know more about the exciting work we are doing and ways to get involved. I will be happy to talk with you in person.

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