Hello,
I'm very happy to announce I'll be starting a position as a Ph.D. researcher in Applied Cryptography at the Institute for Computing and Information Sciences of Radboud Universiteit in Nijmegen, starting in September this year. I'll be working with Lejla Batina as my supervisor, and Joan Daemen and Peter Schwabe as advisors. My topic is broadly "make tor's crypto better". More specifically, it's "make tor post-quantum"; beyond that, it could reasonably include working with other cryptographers to design some of the weirder constructions which tor needs, e.g. the 509-byte chained wide-block cipher that Nick's been going on about.
The position lasts for four years, but covers only 50% of my time, because my supervisor and I are in full agreement that it would be more beneficial — both to Tor and to my thesis — if the other 50% of my time is spent doing development for Tor.
As a non-academic, I feel that this is a somewhat unique opportunity. I've no desire to publish papers just for the sake of publishing something with my name on it — I care about improving Tor. My hope is that this Ph.D. results in the design and implementation of things that we've needed for a while.
Best Regards,