Gregor Leander was honored with a rare award.

Award
Gregor Leander named IACR Fellow for 2026

It is one of the highest honors in the field of cryptology.

An outstanding honor: Gregor Leander, Professor for Symmetric Cryptography at the Faculty of Computer Science at Ruhr University Bochum, Germany, and principle investigator at the cluster of exzellence CASA, has been elected as Fellow of the International Association of Cryptologic Research (IACR). The Fellows program is awarded to only 0.25 per cent of the IACR’s 2500 members each year and recognizes outstanding IACR members for technical and professional contributions to cryptologic research.

The award was granted in recognition of “seminal contributions to symmetric cryptography and outstanding service to the IACR community through editorial leadership, conference organization, and sustained scientific excellence,” according to the Selection Committee.

About the person

Gregor Leander is a leading researcher in symmetric cryptography, with contributions that led to the standardization of widely used ciphers such as PRESENT and SKINNY as ISO standards. His work focuses on the design and analysis of efficient and secure cryptographic primitives.

He has received multiple honors, including an ERC Advanced Grant, multiple Best Paper Awards at top-tier conferences, the German IT Security Award and a Heisenberg Professorship from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG).

In addition to his outstanding scientific achievements, Gregor Leander served as speaker of the Horst Görtz Institute for IT Security, Dean of the Graduate School of the Cluster of Excellence CASA, and currently holds the position of dean of the Faculty of Computer Science. He also founded and serves as managing editor of IACR Transactions on Symmetric Cryptology, a renowned open-access journal.

It has been several years since a researcher from Bochum was named an IACR Fellow: The last person to receive this honor was Christof Paar (founding director of the MPI-SP) in 2017.

Press contact

Christina Scholten
Horst Görtz Insitute for IT Security
Ruhr University Bochum
Phone: +49 234 32 29274
Email: christina.scholten@ruhr-uni-bochum.de

Website

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