Dr Rachel Player, a lecturer in the Department of Information Security at Royal Holloway, University of London has received The Radiant Award for Advancing Internet Security awarded by the Internet Security Research Group, the parent organisation behind Let’s Encrypt. Supported by The Internet Society, the award carries a gift of $10,000.
Rachel Player (Photo by Catherine Oughtibridge)
As only the second Radiant Award recipient, a scheme that recognises individuals whose contributions make the internet more secure and privacy-respecting, Rachel was selected for her work in post-quantum cryptography and homomorphic encryption.
Both of these areas of cryptography show promise for playing a role in a more secure and privacy-respecting web in the future. Homomorphic encryption allows people to do computations on encrypted data, so that information can remain private and still be worked with. This is a highly-relevant field in any area that deals with sensitive and personal data, such as medicine and finance.
Previously a PhD student at Royal Holloway, Dr Rachel Player was a postdoc in the team with Dr Martin R. Albrecht working as part of the EU 2020 PROMETHEUS project on lattice-based cryptography. In January - May 2019, she was a visiting researcher at Sorbonne Université in Paris after a one-year postdoc position in the same team.
Rachel is also interested in lowering the barriers for young people – young women, especially – to work professionally on topics like cryptography.
Read more about Rachel’s research and her path into cryptography here:
