Joan Daemen (; born 1965) is a Belgian

cryptographer Cryptography, or cryptology (from "hidden, secret"; and ''graphein'', "to write", or '' -logia'', "study", respectively), is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of adversarial behavior. More gen ...

who is currently

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other tertiary education, post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin ...

of digital security (symmetric encryption) at

Radboud University Radboud University (abbreviated as RU, , formerly ) is a public research university located in Nijmegen, Netherlands. RU has seven faculties and more than 24,000 students. Established in 1923, Radboud University has consistently been included in ...

. He co-designed with

Vincent Rijmen Vincent Rijmen (; born 16 October 1970) is a Belgium, Belgian cryptographer and one of the two designers of the Rijndael, the Advanced Encryption Standard. Rijmen is also the co-designer of the WHIRLPOOL cryptographic hash function, and the block ...

the

Rijndael The Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), also known by its original name Rijndael (), is a specification for the encryption of electronic data established by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in 2001. AES is a variant ...

cipher, which was selected as the

Advanced Encryption Standard The Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), also known by its original name Rijndael (), is a specification for the encryption of electronic data established by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in 2001. AES is a variant ...

(AES) in 2001. More recently, he co-designed the

Keccak SHA-3 (Secure Hash Algorithm 3) is the latest member of the Secure Hash Algorithm family of standards, released by NIST on August 5, 2015. Although part of the same series of standards, SHA-3 is internally different from the MD5-like struct ...

cryptographic hash, which was selected as the new

SHA-3 SHA-3 (Secure Hash Algorithm 3) is the latest member of the Secure Hash Algorithm family of standards, released by NIST on August 5, 2015. Although part of the same series of standards, SHA-3 is internally different from the MD5-like stru ...

hash by

NIST The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is an agency of the United States Department of Commerce whose mission is to promote American innovation and industrial competitiveness. NIST's activities are organized into physical s ...

in October 2012. He has also designed or co-designed the MMB,

Square In geometry, a square is a regular polygon, regular quadrilateral. It has four straight sides of equal length and four equal angles. Squares are special cases of rectangles, which have four equal angles, and of rhombuses, which have four equal si ...

SHARK Sharks are a group of elasmobranch cartilaginous fish characterized by a ribless endoskeleton, dermal denticles, five to seven gill slits on each side, and pectoral fins that are not fused to the head. Modern sharks are classified within the ...

NOEKEON NOEKEON is a family of two block ciphers designed by Joan Daemen, Michaël Peeters, Gilles Van Assche and Vincent Rijmen and submitted to the NESSIE project in September 2000. The two ciphers are "direct mode" NOEKEON, to be used for maximum ...

, 3-Way, and

BaseKing In cryptography, BaseKing is a block cipher designed in 1994 by Joan Daemen. It is very closely related to 3-Way, as the two are variants of the same general cipher technique. BaseKing has a block size of 192 bits–twice as long as 3-Way, ...

block cipher In cryptography, a block cipher is a deterministic algorithm that operates on fixed-length groups of bits, called ''blocks''. Block ciphers are the elementary building blocks of many cryptographic protocols. They are ubiquitous in the storage a ...

s. In 2017 he won the

Levchin Prize The Levchin Prize for real-world cryptography is a prize given to people or organizations who are recognized for contributions to cryptography that have a significant impact on its practical use. The recipients are selected by the steering commit ...

for Real World Cryptography "for the development of AES and SHA3". He describes his development of encryption algorithms as creating the bricks which are needed to build the secure foundations online. In 1988, Daemen graduated in electro-mechanical

engineering Engineering is the practice of using natural science, mathematics, and the engineering design process to Problem solving#Engineering, solve problems within technology, increase efficiency and productivity, and improve Systems engineering, s ...

at the

Katholieke Universiteit Leuven KU Leuven (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven) is a Catholic research university in the city of Leuven, Belgium. Founded in 1425, it is the oldest university in Belgium and the oldest university in the Low Countries. In addition to its main camp ...

. He subsequently joined the

COSIC The Computer Security and Industrial Cryptography research group, commonly called COSIC, is a research group at the Department of Electrical Engineering of KU Leuven, which is headed by Bart Preneel. Research Research and expertise in digital ...

research group, and has worked on the design and

cryptanalysis Cryptanalysis (from the Greek ''kryptós'', "hidden", and ''analýein'', "to analyze") refers to the process of analyzing information systems in order to understand hidden aspects of the systems. Cryptanalysis is used to breach cryptographic se ...

stream cipher stream cipher is a symmetric key cipher where plaintext digits are combined with a pseudorandom cipher digit stream ( keystream). In a stream cipher, each plaintext digit is encrypted one at a time with the corresponding digit of the keystrea ...

s and

cryptographic hash function A cryptographic hash function (CHF) is a hash algorithm (a map (mathematics), map of an arbitrary binary string to a binary string with a fixed size of n bits) that has special properties desirable for a cryptography, cryptographic application: ...

s. Daemen completed his PhD in 1995, at which point he worked for a year at

Janssen Pharmaceutica Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine (formerly Janssen Pharmaceuticals) is a Belgian pharmaceutical company headquartered in Beerse, Belgium, and wholly owned by Johnson & Johnson. It was founded in 1953 by Paul Janssen. In 1961, Janssen Ph ...

Beerse Beerse () is a Municipalities of Belgium, municipality located in the Belgium, Belgian province of Antwerp (province), Antwerp. The municipality comprises the towns of Beerse proper and Vlimmeren. In 2024, Beerse had a total population of 18,60Th ...

Belgium Belgium, officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. Situated in a coastal lowland region known as the Low Countries, it is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeas ...

. He subsequently worked at the BACOB bank,

Banksys Banksys N.V. (or Banksys SA) was a Belgian payment processor owned by Belgian banks. It was formed in 1989 through the merge of ATM/ POS networks of Bancontact and Mister cash. It also developed the Proton system, which was later spun-off int ...

, Proton World and then

STMicroelectronics STMicroelectronics Naamloze vennootschap, NV (commonly referred to as ST or STMicro) is a European multinational corporation, multinational semiconductor contract manufacturing and design company. It is the largest of such companies in Europe. ...

References

External links

* * * 1965 births Living people Belgian cryptographers KU Leuven alumni Modern cryptographers People from Hamont-Achel {{Europe-mathematician-stub