Rate My Professor Ron Steinfeld

Professor Ron Steinfeld is a Professor in the Department of Software Systems and Cybersecurity in the Faculty of Information Technology at Monash University, where he serves as Discipline Lead for Cybersecurity and Deputy Course Director for the BInfTech (Cyber Major). He holds a BSc in Mathematics and Physics (1998), BE (Hons., First Class) in Electrical and Computer Systems (2000), and PhD in Computer Science (2003), all from Monash University. His professional career began with a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at Macquarie University (2003-2006), followed by Macquarie University Research Fellow (2007-2009) and ARC Research Fellow (2009-2012) positions there. Returning to Monash University, he progressed from Lecturer/ARC Research Fellow (2012-2014) and Senior Lecturer (2015-2019) to Associate Professor (2020-present) and Professor.

Professor Steinfeld possesses over 20 years of research experience in cryptography and information security, authoring more than 80 papers in international refereed conferences and journals, over 10 of which have exceeded 100 citations each, with a total of over 8,400 citations and an h-index of 41 according to Google Scholar. His foundational contributions include the introduction of structured lattice problems such as Polynomial-LWE, establishing their quantum security foundations and cryptographic applications, as well as the first quantum security proofs for NTRU-based encryption and signatures; variants of these are incorporated in NIST Post-Quantum Cryptography standards Kyber, Dilithium, and Falcon. He received the ASIACRYPT 2015 Best Paper Award for "Improved Security Proofs in Lattice-Based Cryptography: Using the Rényi Divergence Rather Than the Statistical Distance." Other key publications include "Faster Fully Homomorphic Encryption" (ASIACRYPT 2010), "Middle-Product Learning with Errors" (CRYPTO 2017), and recent works such as "DualRing-PRF: Post-quantum (Linkable) Ring Signatures from Legendre and Power Residue PRFs" (2024) and "ACE: A Consent-Embedded privacy-preserving search on genomic database" (2024). He has secured more than AUD$4 million in research and consulting funding from the Australian Research Council, Data61/CSIRO, and cybersecurity industry partners. Steinfeld serves on the editorial board of Designs, Codes and Cryptography (2017-present), as Technical Program Committee member for EUROCRYPT, CRYPTO, and ASIACRYPT, and as keynote speaker at CCSW 2024. He has extensive teaching experience, including as Chief Examiner and Lecturer for FIT2093 Introduction to Cybersecurity, FIT5003 Software Security, and FIT5124 Advanced Topics in Security.