A Grant to Alon Rosen From Fondazione Cariplo

Over the last few years, the importance of digital transformation is ever more evident, especially in dealing with emergencies such as COVID-19. However, the increasing use of the internet and associated technologies leads to data privacy issues, and that's where cryptography comes in, a tool that allows systems to be protected from illicit behavior.

Alon Rosen, Full Professor at Bocconi's Department of Computing Sciences, has obtained a grant of ca. € 340K from the Bando ERC of Fondazione Cariplo to strengthen the research area of cryptography. In fact, Rosen's research focuses mainly on the theoretical foundations of cryptography and their interaction with computational complexity in order to identify secure cryptographic systems. On these issues, Rosen was awarded an ERC Advanced Grant for a project focused on studying alternative measures of computational hardness.

Rosen's expertise also enables Bocconi to achieve the important goal of extending the boundaries of the social sciences. The digital transformation has, indeed, led to a new vision of social sciences which is expanding to include disciplines, such as data science, computer science and cognitive science, which are fundamental tools for understanding and facing today's major challenges, in a multidisciplinary approach.

The Bando ERC of Fondazione Cariplo aims at promoting the attractiveness of the research system in Lombardy, since Italy is currently not very competitive in terms of the number of researchers who decide to carry out their research in the region. The contribution from Fondazione Cariplo allows to recruit from foreign research centers, foreign or Italian researchers with ERC funds, and to enable them to transfer their research to a University in Lombardy.