Gilles Barthe

Gilles Barthe is a scientific director at the Max Planck Institute for Security and Privacy in Bochum, Germany, and a part-time research professor at the IMDEA Software Institute in Madrid, Spain. His research focuses on programming languages, program verification, cryptography, privacy, and mathematical logic, with an emphasis on applying relational verification to cryptographic systems. He leads the Foundations of Security and Privacy Group, developing techniques to ensure cryptographic software is secure against timing and side-channel attacks, and verifies implementations of post-quantum algorithms like Kyber. Barthe has pioneered tools such as EasyCrypt for formal proofs, and contributed to standards like AWS Key Management Service verification. His work bridges theory (e.g., quantum verification) and practice (e.g., compiler optimization for constant-time code).

• Education: Ph.D. in 1993 from University of Manchester, followed by roles at INRIA, IMDEA, and others.
• Research Interests: Secure compilation, cryptographic protocol verification, differential privacy, and quantum programming semantics.

Recent articles explore secure compilation against Spectre variants, quantum relational logics, and formal verification of lattice-based cryptography. He has advised over 20 PhD/Master’s students, many contributing to cryptographic verification frameworks. Barthe’s teams collaborate on high-assurance implementations, masking techniques, and mitigating modern microarchitecture threats. His lab’s work includes PanCast for epidemic risk mitigation and certified cryptographic libraries.