Chaoyun Li is a Lecturer in Software Security at the Surrey Centre for Cyber Security, University of Surrey, since March 2023. Prior to this, he served as a postdoc researcher at the COSIC research group, KU Leuven (2020–2023) and completed his PhD in cryptography under Prof. Bart Preneel at the same institution in 2020. His academic journey includes a Marie Skłodowska-Curie ESR Fellowship (2015–2019) as part of the EU H2020 ECRYPT-NET project. Chaoyun holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering from KU Leuven (2020) and has conducted extensive research in applied cryptography, cryptanalysis, privacy-enhancing technologies, and mathematical foundations of cryptography. His work focuses on breaking cryptographic systems, designing secure primitives, and optimizing lightweight ciphers for constrained environments. Notable contributions include advancements in side-channel attacks, MDS matrix design, and de Bruijn sequence construction. His research interests span symmetric cryptography, fault analysis, and secure implementations. Recent projects emphasize practical intrusion detection over encrypted traffic and the integration of cryptographic ciphers with fully homomorphic encryption (FHE). Chaoyun has received several accolades, including the FWO Junior Postdoc Fellowship (2020–2023) and the CHES 2021 Challenge WhibOx Contest victory for best implementations (2021). He actively contributes to academic service, serving on program committees for conferences like Indocrypt and IMACC, and reviewing for journals such as IEEE Transactions on Information Theory and Designs, Codes and Cryptography. As a mentor, he co-supervises PhD student Indranil Thakur and has guided master’s students Ryan De Koninck, Edward Wiels, Michiel Verbauwhede, and Xueming Zhong. His collaborative efforts include affiliations with imec-COSIC (KU Leuven) and visits to institutions such as the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Orange Labs. Professional activities include invited talks at venues like the International Workshop on Coding Theory and Cryptography and the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Chaoyun’s work bridges theoretical cryptography and practical security applications, with a focus on real-world implementations and vulnerabilities in cryptographic systems.
