Interested in Working with Me?

If you are a student interested in working with me, you've come to the right place! Please follow the guidelines in this webpage.

General Information

Some general information about my expectations for any student who wishes to work with me.

• Students should be mathematically mature; i.e., familiarity with and comfortable writing formal proofs, and willnig to learn new topics and ideas.
• Students should have or gain background in modern cryptography. If you have none, you will be expected to gain this background before working with me in earnest.
• In order to receive funding from me, you will need to have worked with me (e.g., in a class or on some research project) for at least one semester. I will not offer funding before this.
• You will be expected to typset documents in $\LaTeX$. This is not optional!

Contacting Me

Your initial point of contact with me will likely be over email. Even if you are a current UIC student and are in a class I am teaching, please still send me an email indicating your interest in working with me. For this email, please do the following things:

• Include the phrase "Interested in working with you" in the subject line. If you do not do this, your email will not be filtered properly and may be marked as spam.
• Tell me about your background knowledge in cryptography and/or mathematics. I am open to students who are not necessarily trained in cryptography, but are mathematically mature and motivated to learn new things. At a minimum, if you do not have the requisite background knowledge in cryptography, you will be expected to take a cryptography course (one which covers topics in modern cryptography) before working with me in earnest.
• Tell me about why you would like to work with me, and what topics you are interested in. This can include topics outside of cryptography; for such topics, please tell me about your background in these areas (e.g., algorithms and complexity, privacy, security, etc.).
• Include an up-to-date CV with your email.
• Send the email to my uic.edu address.

Please do not do the following things:

• Do not send me a generic email about conducting research in areas unrelated to my interests. I will simply ignore and likely delete this email.
• Do not include more information than what I've requested above. There will be time for that if a meeting is arranged.
• Do not send an email to one of my non UIC addresses. I will likely ignore it.

Other Students

The above information also applies to other students who are interested in working with me (e.g., Masters and Undergraduates), along with the following additional information.

Undergraduate and Masters Students

Please note that I will try to accomodate undergraduate and masters students as best I can, but preference will be given to PhD students.

• If you are an undgraduate or masters student interested in admission to the UIC PhD program, please feel free to reach out to me and tell me about your background, including prior research experience. If the fit is right, I will see what can be done about your admission to the program.
• If you are a current undergraduate or masters student at UIC and are interested in working with me, please feel free to reach out! Motivated and hard-working students are always welcome.

High School Students

Unfortunately, at this time, I do not have projects for High School students. I hope to change this in the near future!