New colleagues - 2019

This page is continuously being updated.


On July 1st, Pingan Chen, joined as a PhD student in the algorithmics group

Professional Background: I received my Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Hangzhou Dianzi University in China in 2018. I was a master’s student at Aarhus University before I started my PhD studies. 

Personal Interests: In my spare time, I enjoy reading and music.


On January 1st, Abel Nieto, joined as a PhD student at Lars Birkedal in the Logic & Semtantics group 

Professional background: I completed my bachelor in Computer Science at the University of Waterloo, in balmy Ontario, Canada. Afterwards, I worked for close to three years at Google, writing mobile apps and distributed systems. Starting in 2017, I went back to school for a masters in CS. There, I worked on the calculus that formalizes Scala, as well on retrofitting the Scala compiler with a type system for tracking nullability (https://dotty.epfl.ch/docs/reference/other-new-features/explicit-nulls.html). During my PhD, I look forward to working on program verification and formal methods. Specifically, on ways to prove distributed systems correct using the Iris logic.

Personal interests: I like hiking and, as of late, cross-country skiing. To my dismay, even though cross-country skiing is also called nordic skiing, I learned that Aarhus doesn't get a lot of snow during the winter. Something will need to be done about that!


On October 1st, Luisa Siniscalchi, joined as a postdoc. 

Professional background: Luisa Siniscalchi received her master's degree in Computer Science and her Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Salerno, Italy. Luisa's main area of research is cryptography. Some of the topics she worked on are multi-party computation, zero-knowledge proofs, and blockchain technologies.

Personal interests: Luisa likes spending her time reading and traveling.


On January 1st, Armaël Guénau, joined as a postdoc at Lars Birkedal in the Logic & Semantics group

Professional background: I did my PhD at Inria Paris in the Gallium team, with Arthur Charguéraud and François Pottier.

Personal interests: Apart from hacking on OCaml-related projects and sometimes the OCaml compiler, I enjoy cooking (mostly vegetarian food!) and bike rides.


On November 1st, Steffan Sølvsten, joined as a PhD student at Jaco van de Pol in the Logic & Semantics group 

Professional Background: I received my Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science at Aarhus Univesity back in 2018 and spend one year away from university, where I worked as a consultant for LEGO and as a student programmer for SCALGO.

Personal Interests: When I’m not occupied with work at the university, being the head kitchen responsible of Regnecentralen, or creating graphics for DSAU, then I enjoy to spend my time with reliving the roaring twenties dancing Lindy Hop, climbing, or just playing board games and drinking tea with my friends.


On September 1st, Emil Madsen Bennedsen, joined as a research assistant in the Cryptography and Security group

Professional baggrund: Master's Degree in Mathematics from Aarhus University, June 2019.

Personal interests: I like playing badminton and board games. I love travelling and to meet new (local) people. I enjoy the concept of couchsurfing, both to host and to surf.

I like languages too, right now trying to learn Spanish. 


On September 1st, Andreas Pavlogiannis, joined as an adjunct at programming languages 

Professional Background: Andreas holds a M.Eng. degree in Computer Science from the University of Patras in Greece, a M.Sc. from the University of California at Davis in the USA, and a Ph.D. degree from the Institute of Science and Technology in Austria. Before joining Aarhus University, he spent two years as a PostDoc at École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland.

Personal interests: Andreas's research interests fall broadly in the algorithmic and mathematical analysis of systems. His primary line of work is on programming languages and formal verification of software. He also studies computational models of evolutionary systems, mainly ones that arise in a biological or social context.


On August 1st, Benjamin Salling Hvass joined as a PhD Student in the Logic & Semantics group

Professional background:

I completed my masters degree in Mathematics at Aarhus University in June 2019.

Personal interests:

In my spare time I enjoy many different activities including playing cards and boardgames, Pubquizzing (at Studenterbaren), running, climbing and hiking


On December 1st, Christina Gøttsche started her new job as recruitment coordinator at CS.

Professional background:  she graduated with a MSc in IT Product Development here at Computer Science in 2016. She has since been working in a software development company in Aarhus, doing project management, agile coaching and quality assurance.

Personal interests:  She loves to travel, and to hang out with friends playing games, discovering new food places, etc. She also enjoys working on 3D models and doing 3D printing.


On September 1st, Zeinab Schaefer, joined as a postdoc in the Ubiqutous group. 

Professional background: Before joining Aarhus University, I was doing my PhD research at Saarland University (Systems neuroscience and Neurotechnology unit) where my focus of research was decoding neural correlates of selective attention and long-term habituation based on instantaneous phase of EEG recordings. Since August 2019, I am working on the HealthD360 project. 

Personal interests: I enjoy drawing and my interests are data science and deep learning.


On September 1st, Sophia Yakoubov, joined as a postdoc in the Cryptography and Security group. 

Professional background: I graduated from MIT in 2011 with a B.S. in Mathematics with Computer Science (course 18c). After that, I worked as a cryptographer and software engineer at MIT Lincoln Laboratory. Starting in 2014, I attended graduate school in Cryptography at Boston University, where I looked at new multi-party computation schemes, and explored authenticated data structures (specifically, accumulator constructions).

Personal interests: I enjoy biking, board games and logic puzzles.

 


On September 1st, Kevin Wenkai, joined as a PhD in the Ubiquitous Computing group. 

Professional background: I received my Master’s degree in Human-Computer Interaction from Uppsala University in Sweden, during which I exchanged to Purdue University, West Lafayette for a semester. I have an interest specifically in the interaction for Data Visualization.

Personal interests: In my spare time, I enjoy biking around the city and nature a lot. I also have a great passion for music – you’ll probably hear me singing in the corridor from time to time or even on stage once in a while.  

       


On September 1st, Irfansha Shaik, joined as a PhD in the Logic and Semantics group.

Professional background: I did my MSc by Research in Computer Science from Swansea University on Counting N-Queens problem. My research interests are Verification, SAT solving and AI.

Personal interests: I am planning to explore all Denmark on bike and am interested in learning Salsa and Bachata.   


On August 1st, Zesen Qian, joined as a PhD in the Logic and Semantics group. 

Professional background: I completed my master degree at Carnegie Mellon University in the autumn of 2019, before that I completed my bachelor degree at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

Personal background: Outside of work, I enjoy playing DotA and fantasizing about my next toy project.    


On August 1st, Mark Simkin, joined as a Postdoc. 

I handed in my PhD thesis at the Aarhus Crypto Group under the supervision of Ivan Damgard and co-supervision of Claudio Orlando.


On August 1st, Alex Kavos, joined as a postdoc at Logic and Semantics

Professional background: I read Computer Science at the University of Oxford and completed my DPhil (PhD equivalent) in 2017. Following that, I moved to New England to work at Wesleyan University as a postdoc in Homotopy Type Theory.

Personal interests: I am interested in the logical foundations of programming languages and computing at large. My work is driven by the possibility of applying what is normally thought of as very pure mathematics to the clarification of various concepts and situations found in programming and informatics. My current research is mostly centred around the applications of modal logic and modal type theory to programming languages. Modalities can express various data flow properties, leading to very strong systems for static typing. The intended applications range from the purely mathematical (e.g. more succinct and informative mechanised proofs of theorems in topology) to the very applied (for example, the control of information flow in language-based security).


On August 1st, Sai Rahul Rachuri, Joined as a PhD. 

Professional background: I am joining the crypto group at Aarhus. My main supervisor is Claudio Orlandi and co-supervisor is Peter Scholl.  I have received my Integrated Master’s degree (Bachelor’s + Master’s) from the International Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore in 2018. My main interest is building solutions using multi-party computation for real-world problems like privacy-preserving machine learning.

Personal interests: My interests include playing tennis, reading, and playing DotA.


On July 1st, Eduardo Soria, joined as a postdoc.

Professional background: Eduardo obtained his PhD in Cryptography at University of Bristol (UK) under Nigel Smart's supervision. Before doing so, he completed a Master's degree in algebra applied to cryptography at University of Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (France) and a degree in Mathematics at University of Valladolid (Spain). He also worked for six months as an intern at Morpho (now Idemia) in 2015. Within cryptography, his research has so far been focused in Multi-Party Computation, with an emphasis in large-scale scenarios. 

 Personal interests: When out of work, he enjoys hiking, live music and reading.


On June 1st, Carsten Baum, joined as a Postdoc at Cryptography and Data Security.

Professional background: Before arriving to Denmark I’ve been a Postdoc at Bar Ilan University in Israel. I actually obtained my PhD from AU so it is a bit of homecoming. I work in the field of Cryptography and Data Security.

Personal interests: In my free time I enjoy traveling, sports and finding the best coffee in town.


On June 1st, Hamidreza Khoshakhlagh, joined as a PhD student. 

Professional background: I studied Applied Mathematics in BSc at K.N.T university of technology and Computer Science in MSc at Sharif university of technology. I was a Junior research fellow in Cryptography at the university of Tartu for one year as well. 

Personal interests: I enjoy sports like soccer and swimming.


On May 1st, Judith Hermanns, joined the Databaseg group as a PhD

Professional Background:I obtained my M.Sc. and B.Sc. in Computer Science from RWTH Aachen University, Germany.  My Master's thesis was about multiple object tracking.

Personal interests: In my spare time I enjoy reading, sewing and climbing.


On April 1st, Jacob Botsch, joined the Logic and Semantics group as a PhD student.

Professional background: I finished my BSc in computer science in 2017 here at Aarhus University and was doing my MSc here as well, before starting my PhD. For my MSc I specialized in program analysis/verification and algorithms/data structures.

Personal interests: I enjoy board and video games, TV shows, and working on hobby projects.


On April 1st, Andreas Lynge, joined the Logic and Semantics group as a PhD Student. 

Professional background: I am a PhD student in the Logic and Semantics group at the Department of Computer Science, Aarhus University, Denmark. My PhD project is on verified computer algebra in type theory. I am supervised by Bas Spitters, Department of Computer Science, and Niels Lauritzen, Department of Mathematics.

Personal interests:

  • Abstract Algebra
  • Algebraic Topology
  • Category Theory
  • Type Theory
  • Univalent Foundation

Work: Universal Algebra in HoTT, https://github.com/andreaslyn/Work/blob/master/Math-Bachelor.pdf.  


On April 1st, Joachim Nyborg, joined the Database group as a PhD. 

Professional background: I received my Master’s degree in Computer Science from Aarhus University January 2019, where I wrote my thesis under the supervision of Ira Assent in collaboration with the company FieldSense on the topic crop classification with deep learning. I’m now doing an industrial PhD with Ira and FieldSense, where I’ll be researching the intersection of deep learning and agriculture. 

Personal interests: In my spare time, I enjoy video games, music, films, and spending time with family and friends.


On March 1st Marcel Borowski joined the CMA group as a PhD student.

Professional Background

Before joining the Aarhus University, I completed a Bachelor's and Master's program in computer science at the University of Konstanz in Germany. While focusing on non-photorealistic rendering in the Computer Graphics group in my Bachelor's, in my Master's I joined the Human-Computer Interaction group. During my Master's I visited the Aarhus University for an internship in the group of Clemens Klokmose in 2017, implementing a package manager for Codestrates. In my thesis, I analyzed the collaborative use of Codestrates and its extension Codestrates Packages by pairs of students in an introductory course on application development at the University of Konstanz.

Personal Interests

In my free time, I enjoy doing photography. I like to take photos of landscapes, architecture, portraits, and daily scenes, i.e. street photography. Besides photography, I am interested in graphic design and typography.


On March 1st Jeppe Fredsgaard Blaabjerg joined the Logic and Semantics group as a PhD student

Professional background: I received my Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Aarhus University in January 2018.

Personal interests: In my spare time, I enjoy music, staying active with running and cycling, and watching British panel shows.


On March 1st Marius Hogräfer joined the Ubiquitous Computing and Interaction group as a PhD student.

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On February 1st, Ciprian-Octavian TRUICĂ started as a postdoc at CS

Professional background:

Ciprian-Octavian TRUICĂ received a Ph.D. in Computer Science and Information Technology from University Politehnica of Bucharest in 2018, an M.Sc. Degree in Computer Science and Information Technology from University Politehnica of Bucharest in 2013, a B.Sc. degree in Computer Science from the University of Bucharest in 2013, and a B.Sc. degree in Computer Science and Information Technology from University Politehnica of Bucharest in 2011. Since 2013, he has held the position of Teaching Assistant at the Computer Science and Engineering Department, Faculty of Automatic Control and Computers, University Politehnica of Bucharest. Here he has taught courses and seminaries at bachelor and master levels on Relational and NoSQL Databases, Data Warehouses, Big Data, Data Mining, Text Mining, and Information Retrieval. He has been an invited researcher at the ERIC laboratory, Université de Lyon, France in 2015 and 2016. His research interests mainly relate to Relational and NoSQL Databases, Big Data, Text Mining and Analysis, Information Retrieval, High-Performance Computing, and Cloud Computing.


On February 1st Anca Nitulescu joined the Cryptography and Security group as a postdoc.

Professional background: I hold a B.Sc. and a M.Sc. in Mathematics, a second M.Sc. of Research (MPRI) and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from École Normale Supérieure Paris (PSL) in France. I was a visiting assistant researcher at Yale University, New Haven, USA. I also completed a research internship at IMDEA SOftware in Madrid, Spain.
My research interests are focused on design and security analysis of cryptographic protocols for computation integrity. Some of the topics I work on are

  • Cloud Computing - Privacy and Integrity
  • Succinct Non-interactive Arguments of Knowledge
  • Zero-Knowledge Proofs and Arguments
  • Verifiable Delegation of Computations
  • Homomorphic Authentication Primitives

Personal interests: I enjoy spending my spare time doing cultural activities. I also love nature, animals and visiting new places. My main passions are traveling, art cinema, theater, live concerts, literature, social dancing, nature photography, sustainable fashion, vintage wearing. I am a vegetarian, non-binary, moderate feminist and concerned about the environmental changes.


On February 1st Elena Pagnin joined the Cryptography and Security group as a postdoc

Professional Background 

My area of research includes homomorphic crypto systems, data and user authentication and private asynchronous communication protocols (Signal and Whatsapp). 2019, PhD at Chalmers university (Göteborg - Sweden) in Information Security and Cryptography. 2013 Masters in Applied Mathematics at the University of Trento. 2011 Bachelor Degree in Pure Mathematics at the University of Padua. 

Personal Interest

I enjoy travelling, photography and cooking. I’m also green belt in Karate. 


On February 1st André Takeshi Endo joined the Programming Language group as postdoc

Professional background: Received a bachelor's degree in Analysis of Systems from the Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso do Sul (DCT-UFMS), Brazil in 2005. I also hold M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from Universidade de Sao Paulo (ICMC-USP), Brazil, awarded in 2008 and 2013, respectively. Since 2013, I am an Assistant Professor at the Universidade Tecnológica Federal do Paraná (UTFPR), Cornelio Procopio, Brazil. Currently, I am on a leave of my university for postdoctoral studies at Aarhus University. 

Personal Interests: I enjoy spending time with my family and friends, reading books and comics, and traveling. 


On January 1st Akira Takahashi joined the Cryptography and Security group as a PhD student

Professional background: Akira obtained his M.Sc. and B.Eng. from Kyoto University, Japan. He was an intern in the Cryptography Research Laboratory at NTT Secure Platform Laboratories, Japan and has also worked as a software developer at Richie Oy, Finland.
His research interests cover cryptanalysis of public key cryptographic algorithms and construction of efficient secure two-/multi-party computation protocols. 

Personal interests: I enjoy traveling and exercising in my spare time.