Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium)
Interdisciplinary Centre for Law & ICT (ICRI)
The Interdisciplinary Centre for Law & ICT (known by its acronym ICRI, derived from the Dutch name for the Centre, - Interdisciplinair Centrum voor Recht en Informatica) is a research centre within the Faculty of Law. Directed by Prof. dr. Jos Dumortier, it comprises three different research teams which deal with the following areas:
- Information Technology Law: legal aspects of the Internet, legal aspects of information security, personal data protection, IT contracts, law enforcement in cyberspace, electronic fund transfer, legal aspects of EDI in the public sector.
- Electronic Communications Law: international telecommunications law, European competition law in the telecommunications market, legal framework for the broadcasting sector, legal consequences of the convergence between the audio-visual and the telecommunications sectors.
- Legal Informatics and Information Retrieval: legal knowledge representation, legal information retrieval, automatic indexing and abstracting.
In each of these three fields, the ICRI staff members carry out research, provide consultancy services and are active in education.
For more information check the website: www.icri.be
Computer Security and Industrial Cryptography (COSIC)
The COSIC research group, headed by Prof. Dr. ir Bart Preneel, is part of the Department of Electrical Engineering (ESAT), which is one of the departments of the Faculty of Engineering of the K.U.Leuven.
The COSIC group performs research on the design, evaluation and implementation of primitives and protocols, including their applications in telecommunications and computer networks. COSIC has reviewed and/or evaluated the security of many practical systems. The group has broad expertise from highly mathematical to real-life applications in the area of information security.
The goal of COSIC’s research activities is to create an electronic equivalent for primitives in the physical world such as confidentiality, signatures, identification, anonymity, notarization, and payments.
To achieve this goal, the research concentrates on the design, evaluation, and implementation of cryptographic algorithms and protocols, and on the development of security architectures for computer systems and telecommunications networks.
COSIC’s theoretical work on cryptographic algorithms and protocols is mainly based on discrete mathematics (a.o. number theory, finite fields, Boolean functions, finite geometry, and coding theory); other fields of mathematics relevant to our research include statistics and optimization.
The goal is to achieve efficient and (provably) secure solutions.
COSIC intends to integrate these solutions into different applications including computer systems, telecommunications systems (Internet security, mobile communications), and payment systems. Important aspect here are the efficient implementation (in both software and hardware) of cryptographic primitives and the security evaluation of components and systems including smart cards.
COSIC provides consultancy in the area of computer security and cryptography.
COSIC cooperates with École Normale Supérieure, ICRI, Royal Holloway University of London, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, Technische Universiteit Eindhoven, Université Catholique de Louvain, University of Bergen, University of California at Los Angeles, University of Klagenfurt, and Queensland University of Technology.
COSIC also cooperates with Banksys, British Telecom, EADS, EEMA - The European Forum for Electronic Business, Europay International, Fondazione Ugo Bordoni, Imec, Nokia, Philips, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Proton World International, RSA Laboratories, Siemens AG, Siemens-ATEA, S.W.I.F.T., the Dutch organization for Applied Scientific Research (TNO), Ubizen, and Unicate.
For more details please visit our website.