Rate My Professor Amin Sakzad

Dr. Amin Sakzad is an Associate Professor and Director of Research in the Department of Software Systems and Cybersecurity within the Faculty of Information Technology at Monash University. He holds a PhD in Applied Mathematics from Amirkabir University of Technology, awarded on 19 July 2011, an MSc in Pure Mathematics from the same institution on 10 June 2007, and a BSc in Pure Mathematics on 10 June 2005. His academic career includes serving as a research visitor and lecturer at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada, in 2010, and as a research lecturer at Amirkabir University of Technology in 2011. At Monash University, he began as a Research Fellow in the Software Defined Telecommunications Laboratory, Department of Electrical and Computer Systems Engineering, from January 2012 under Professor Emanuele Viterbo. From February 2015 to April 2017, he was a Research Fellow at the Clayton School of Information Technology under Dr. Ron Steinfeld. Since May 2017, he has been a Lecturer, later progressing to Senior Lecturer and his current position as Associate Professor in the Faculty of Information Technology.

Amin Sakzad's research focuses on lattice coding theory, lattice-based cryptography, post-quantum cryptography, wireless communications, finite fields, and searchable encryption. His work on Euclidean lattices has contributed to real-world applications, including the FACCT sampler adopted in the NIST-standardized Falcon post-quantum signature scheme. His open-source cryptographic implementations have garnered over 30 million downloads through the Legion of the Bouncy Castle platform. He has produced 105 research outputs, including key publications such as 'Improved security proofs in lattice-based cryptography: Using the Renyi divergence rather than the statistical distance' (Journal of Cryptology, 2018), 'Practical backward-Secure Searchable Encryption from symmetric puncturable encryption' (CCS 2018), 'Result pattern hiding searchable encryption for conjunctive queries' (CCS 2018), 'Middle-product learning with errors' (CRYPTO 2017), and 'Integer-forcing MIMO linear receivers based on lattice reduction' (IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, 2013). Sakzad has attracted over $8 million in competitive funding, including a USD $1 million project with the U.S. Department of State for post-quantum cryptography adoption across 11 Indo-Pacific nations. He has supervised PhD students who now work at CSIRO, Amazon, ANU, and ONI. His teaching excellence is recognized with the Monash Vice-Chancellor’s Teaching Excellence Award, Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, FIT Dean's Award for Teaching Excellence (2021), and FIT Dean’s Award for Equity Diversity and Inclusion (2021).