Successful habilitation degree

Dr. Jens Zumbrägel from the institute of algebra has successfully defended his habilitation, which is a postdoctoral lecture qualification. His habilitation thesis is titled "The Discrete Logarithm Problem in Finite Fields of Small Charactreristic".

Having been a guest researcher and a Marie Curie fellow at the algebra institute, Dr. Zumbrägel's research focused on the Discrete Logarithm Problem (DLP), which is one of the standard problems in algorithmic number theory on which modern public-key cryptosystems are built. Dr. Zumbrägel was involved in a series of breakthrough results showing that for finite fields of small characteristic the complexity of the DLP is much weaker than initially thought. This affects in particular the security of pairing-based cryptosystems.