On Monday, November 21, 2022, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Juraj Somorovsky (System Security) and Prof. Dr. Sevag Gharibian (Quantum Informatics) gave their inaugural lectures in lecture hall O1. Prof. Dr. Peter Schreier, Dean of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Computer Science and Mathematics welcomed both professors and the audience at the beginning of the event. "It's always the people that determine the success of a university. That is why we are very happy to welcome these two excellent scientists here at Paderborn University," said Prof. Dr. Schreier.
Prof. Dr. Sevag Gharibian started with his lecture on "Quantum complexity theory - from quantum chemistry to variational quantum algorithms". He has already been working at the Institute of Computer Science at the University of Paderborn since January 2018. Previously, he obtained his PhD at the University of Waterloo and taught at Berkley University in California, among other places. Over the past two decades, quantum complexity theory has become key to our understanding of the performance of quantum computers. In his talk, Prof. Dr. Gharibian began with an introduction to quantum mechanics and then discussed quantum complexity theory. "In our research we are trying to understand the exact boundary between classical and quantum computers. Therefore, we like to go back to the roots of this field to achieve a better understanding.", explains Prof. Dr. Gharibian.
Subsequently, Prof. Dr.-Ing. Juraj Somorovsky spoke on the topic "On the security of TLS and other cryptographic protocols" and presented the cryptographic protocol TLS (Transport Layer Security) in his lecture. This is not only one of the most important and significant of its kind but has also become the target of many well-known cyberattacks. Whether web, email, phone calls, chat, or VPN - there is hardly any type of communication that cannot be secured by TLS. Accordingly, the impact of these attacks can be devastating. "With our work, we have a particularly large impact because TLS is used worldwide. So, if we can find methods to detect these vulnerabilities, it will have a very big impact on overall user security," said Prof. Dr.-Ing. Somorovsky. Prof. Dr.-Ing. Somorovsky has been Professor of System Security at the Institute of Computer Science at the University of Paderborn since February 2020.
