KU Leuven is the largest Belgian academic institution and one of the oldest European universities. Being part of the League of European Research Universities (LERU) KU Leuven is amongst the group of twenty European research-intensive universities committed to the values of high-quality education in an internationally competitive research environment. More than 200 KU Leuven researchers are permanently working on information and communications technology related issues. They belong to different university departments with a strong tradition in multidisciplinary research on information and communications technology issues.
KULeuven – COSIC: The Computer Security and Industrial Cryptography (Imec-Cosic) group belongs to the Electrical Engineering Department of the KU Leuven. KU Leuven was founded in 1425 and is an autonomous university. The Imec-Cosic team has more than 70 researchers including 5 professors, 3 research managers, 21 postdoctoral researchers, 43 researchers, 3 visitors and 6 support staff. During the last 15 years, Imec-Cosic obtained more than 1200 international reviewed publications in journals and conferences, 13 edited books, 10 patents and has graduated over 60 PhD students. Imec-Cosic is part of the Smart Applications and Innovation Services of imec, a high-tech research and innovation hub for nanoelectronics and digital technologies. Imec-Cosic is a core group of the imec high impact initiative on Distributed Trust. The research initiative on Distributed Trust covers 3 different research challenges; Data protection and privacy, Trust4cloud and Security4IoT. The research work and expertise of Imec-Cosic covers a broad span that varies from mathematical foundations and cryptology over development of security algorithms, protocols, network and computer systems towards efficient and secure implementations in hardware and software. The strength of Imec-Cosic lies in bringing together researchers with diverse backgrounds, such as mathematics, computer science and electrical engineering. This broad basis helps Imec-Cosic adopt an integrated approach to problem solving and has led to important successes, such as the selection of the Rijndael algorithm as the US Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), a worldwide standard today.
Imec-Cosic also has a tradition of more than 20 years in the design of secure and efficient hardware and software for embedded systems. It has experience in the design and implementation of security and cryptography functions in ASIC, FPGA, embedded micro-controllers, DSP’s and general purpose processors. It also has a strong experience in developing practical attacks, including side-channel attacks and countermeasures. One of the main objectives of Imec-Cosic is to bridge the gap between fundamental research in cryptology and the future security and privacy needs of citizens, industry and government. The research at Imec-Cosic finds use in a broad range of application domains, such as cloud, Internet of Things, electronic payments, mobile and wireless communications, identity cards, e-voting, protection of e-documents, intelligent home appliances, telematics for the automobile industry and trusted systems. Imec-Cosic has participated in over 45 European research projects (about 10 under FP6 , 7 under FP7 and 7 under H2020) through which it gained thorough experience in privacy-enhancing technologies, identity management, and design and analysis of cryptographic algorithms, protocols and architectures. In 9 of these projects, Imec-Cosic acted or acts as the coordinator: Some examples are the European Network of Excellence for Cryptology (ECRYPT and ECRYPT II), Homomorphic Encryption Applications and Technology (HEAT), European Coordination and Support Action in Cryptology (ECRYPT CSA) and European Integrated Research Training Network on Advanced Cryptographic Technologies for the Internet of Things and the Cloud (ECRYPT-NET). Imec-Cosic also collaborates closely with industry and government for short- and medium-term contract research.
KULeuven – CiTiP: The researchers performing the legal tasks in the project are affiliated to ICRI/CIR henceforth to be known as the KU Leuven Centre for IT & IP Law (CiTiP). CiTiP is a research center at the Faculty of Law of KU Leuven, with currently a staff of over 40 researchers specialized in legal and ethical aspects of ICT innovation. They focus on the fundamental re-thinking of the current legal framework, necessitated by the rapid evolution of technology in different fields, such as government, media, healthcare, commerce, banking, transport, etc. CiTiP is a member of The Leuven Center on Information and Communication Technology, http://www.kuleuven.be/LICT/, which combines the complimentary expertise and experiences of electronics engineers, computer scientists, sociologists and legal scholars in the ICT field and is member of the imec community as an affiliated group. CiTiP has a solid track record as a law and ethics partner of large international and interdisciplinary research projects. It is internationally renowned for its expertise in the areas of data privacy and information security law. Detailed information about the research group and the current projects, together with a complete publication list can be found at: http://www.law.kuleuven.be/citip. In performing its research projects, CiTiP aims to contribute to the development of a new regulatory framework for the information society, by designing new concepts and principles to underpin regulatory frameworks and by studying constitutional and institutional aspects of the information society. The traditional legal norms and values that steer human interaction are analyzed and critically assessed in the light of technological, socio-cultural and economic developments in the modern information society. Based on this knowledge, CiTiP guides the modernization of law making processes and the development of alternative regulatory instruments for the information society.