Recently, Chinese Association for Cryptologic Research (CACR) announced the awards list of its 2021 Excellent Doctoral Dissertation Award. Wen Yunhua (CS PhD graduate of 2019) and Shen Yaobin (CS PhD graduate of 2021)  both won the award. 

Wen Yunhua was advised by Prof. Liu Shengli. Her thesis “Fuzzy Extractor: Constructions and Security Proofs” focused on fuzzy extractor. It proposed a robust fuzzy extractor which can distill a much longer random string, proposed a robust fuzzy extractor which can distill a much longer random string, proposed a robust fuzzy extractor which can distill a much longer random string, and proposed the first reusable fuzzy extractor tolerating a linear fraction of errors from the LWE assumption and the first robustly reusable fuzzy extractor from the LWE assumption. Her findings were published in ASIACRYPT, PKC, Designs, Codes and Cryptography. 

Shen Yaobin was advised by Assoc. Prof. Wang Lei and Prof. Gu Dawu. His thesis “ON THE PROVABLE SECURITY OF SYMMETRIC-KEY CRYPTOGRAPHY” studied several crucial topics in symmetric-key algorithms, and obtained following results: SECURITY ANALYSIS OF ISO/IEC 9797-1:2011; BEYOND-BIRTHDAY-BOUND SECURITY OF DbHtS MACS IN THE MULTI-USER SETTING; IMPROVED SECURITY BOUNDS FOR GENERALIZED FEISTEL NETWORKS; SECURE KEY-ALTERNATING FEISTEL CIPHER WITHOUT KEY SCHEDUEL. 

The 2021 Excellent Doctoral Dissertation Award of Chinese Association for Cryptologic Research is open to the dissertations of all Chinese PhD graduates who obtained the degree in the period between June 1,2018 to July 10, 2021. Applicants are required to achieve significant results in basic theory or applied basic research in cryptography and related fields, or in key technologies and technological innovations. After formal review, preliminary evaluation and final evaluation, a total of 4 papers won the award.