IRFD funds ITU research in voter coercion and graph modification problems
IT University of Copenhagen researchers Oksana Kulyk and Paloma Thomé De Lima have been awarded 2.8 million kroner for their respective projects from the Independent Research Fund Denmark.
Oksana KulykPaloma Thome De LimaComputer Science DepartmentResearchalgorithmsgrantsIT securitydemocracy
Written 15 November, 2022 09:00 by Theis Duelund Jensen
The Independent Research Fund Denmark has just announced the 28 recipients of the Inge Lehmann grant. Among the researchers who will receive funding for their projects are Associate Professor Oksana Kulyk and Assistant Professor Paloma Thomé De Lima, both from the Computer Science department at ITU. The two researchers have secured 2.8 million kroner each for their respective projects.
Oksana Kulyk’s research project, Usable Coercion-Resistant Internet Voting, examines voter coercion which is one of the biggest obstacles to internet voting. If voters cast their votes from an unprotected environment, the coercer can observe the voter during voting and ensure that the voter obeys the coercer's instructions.
Existing cryptographic protocols protect against this kind of coercion. However, they rely on additional steps on behalf of the voter that are known to be too complicated and therefore hardly usable. Oksana Kulyk will apply methods from the human-centered security and privacy field to design voting systems that are both usable and coercion-resistant.
In her project Unifying Theories for Graph Modification Problems, Paloma Thomé De Lima will be focusing on graph modification problems. Graphs are mathematical objects used in Computer Science to model networks. They consist of nodes that are connected by edges. A graph modelling e.g., a road network has a node for each city, and two nodes are joined by an edge if there is a direct road between the corresponding cities. In a graph modification problem, the object is to find out how close a graph (or network) is from satisfying a desired property, and how it can be modified to do so.
Specifically, the project proposes investigating which properties will allow for the design of efficient algorithms for graph modification problems, and in which cases mathematical justifications may be provided for why such algorithms are unlikely to exist.
Independent Research Fund Denmark’s Inge Lehmann programme is open to all scientific fields of study and exists to promote new talent and better gender equality in research. In 2022, the fund received 221 applications of which 28 were granted.
Theis Duelund Jensen, Press Officer, tel: 2555 0447, email: thej@itu.dk