Simon-Philipp Merz

About me

I am a post-doctoral researcher in the Applied Cryptography Group of Kenny Paterson at ETH Zürich.


Previously, I did my PhD in the Information Security Group at Royal Holloway, University of London, under the supervision of Simon R. Blackburn and Christophe Petit. My doctoral research concentrated on post-quantum cryptography and cryptanalysis with a special focus on isogeny-based cryptography.


More generally, I am interested in theoretical and practical aspects of post-quantum cryptography and cryptanalysis, computational number theory and various applications of pure mathematics to cryptography.


During the summer of 2022, I interned at IBM Research Zürich in the Foundations of cryptography group under the supervision of Luca De Feo.


Before doing the PhD, I obtained a BSc in Mathematics from the Free University of Berlin, an MSc in Pure Mathematics from Imperial College London and an MSc in Mathematics and Foundations of Computer Science from the University of Oxford.


Publications


Talks


Teaching and Refereeing

During the winter semester 2015-2016, I was a teaching assistant for the course Computational Mathematics and Scientific Computing.

For the following conferences I was a (sub)reviewer:
CRYPTO 2019, SAC 2019, MathCrypt 2019, AFRICACRYPT 2019, IMACC 2019, PKC 2020, ANTS 2020, AFRICACRYPT 2020, PKC 2021, PQCrypto 2021, ASIACRYPT 2021, SAC 2021, IMACC 2021, ACNS 2022, AFRICACRYPT 2022, ANTS 2022, ASIACRYPT 2022, EUROCRYPT 2023, PKC 2024

I have been a reviewer for the following journals:
Advances in Mathematics of Communications;
Applicable Algebra in Engineering, Communication and Computing;
Designs, Codes and Cryptography;
IET Information Security;
Mathematical and Computational Applications;