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Address: Department of Computer Science
Durham University, South Road, Durham, DH1 3LE, UK

Office:   MCS2007
Email:   [email protected]
GitHub: ksouthern

Assistant Professor (Teaching).

Biography

  • (2024- ) Assistant Professor (Teaching) at Durham University
  • (2023-2024) PDRA at Durham University, working with Pooya Farshim.
  • (2019-2023) PhD at Durham University under the supervision of Maximilien Gadouleau and Lawrence Mitchell, kindly funded in part by SQR Systems and Crypta Labs.
  • (2015-2019) MEng Degree in Computer Science at Durham University. With my theses being:
    • A comparison between security, speed and accuracy for R-LWE based cryptosystems, with a focus on New Hope (2019), with Magnus Bordewich
    • On the security of symmetric key block cipher primitives (2018), with Magnus Bordewich

Research

My research interests lie in cryptography (Symmetric and Post Quantum) and the works of J.R.R. Tolkien.
I am a member of both the IACR and the Tolkien Society

Publications

Talks and Meetings

Computer Science

  • 22nd – 24th July 2024, Durham (UK): Automata 2024 (co-chair)
  • 11th June 2019, Durham (UK): Department of Computer Science Reseach Day (speaker, “A comparison between security, speed and accuracy for R-LWE based cryptosystems, with a focus on New Hope”).
  • 8th May 2019, Durham (UK): Junior Seminar (speaker, “Speeding up the Ring – Learning with Errors Cryptosystem”).
  • 15-17 April 2019, Durham (UK): BCTCS & AlgoUK (attendee and elected as the Postgraduate Representative).

Tolkien

  • 4th – 5th July 2020, Leeds (UK): Tolkien Society Seminar 2020 (Advisory Board Member)
  • 7th – 11th August 2019, Birmingham (UK): Tolkien 2019 (Organiser)
  • 24th March 2019, Newcastle (UK): Tolkien Reading Day (invited speaker, “Ghosts in Tolkien”)
  • 11th – 14th September 2014, Oxford (UK): Oxonmoot (speaker, “On the roots of religion in The Lord of the Rings”).

Teaching

  • 2017-2022: Demonstrator for Algorithms and Data Structures (1st year BSc/MEng Computer Science)
  • 2020-2021: Demonstrator for Networks and Systems (2nd year BSc/MEng Computer Science)
  • 2019-2020: Demonstrator for Programming Paradigms (2nd year BSc/MEng Computer Science)
  • Oct 2019: Demonstrator for Introduction to Computer Science (MSc Business Analytics)