RHUL Cyber CDT Blog

On Saturday 1st July over 1,000 alumni and current participants of the Teach First program gathered at the Totteridge Academy in North London. The reason? Teach First was celebrating 20 year of tackling educational inequality. Initially set up with a cohort of c.150, myself being one of the ‘guinea pig’ year back in 2003, it has grown to over ten times this annual number. Over this time technological developments have come thick and fast, with ChatGPT being just the latest of inventions to grab the public imagination. Initial discussions I’ve had at university and in my school governor role took the form of how students can use ChatCPT to cheat on assignments. These discussions evoked a situation 20 years ago when Wikipedia pages were used by pupils verbatim to circumvent actually doing research homework. So like most things, a problem which is not completely without precedent, but giving some additional challenges. An evolution of the ‘cheating student’ discussion followed into how Ch...

After enjoying the privilege of a long vacation and a few months of distance since my viva, it is time to reflect upon my time in the CDT. A long time ago, in 2018, when the UK was still part of the EU and for most people in Europe pandemic referred only to a board game, I moved to the green and leafy Egham hill. Knowing little of what the future had in store, I had a great time making new friends in my cohort and beyond, enjoying the social activities of the CDT and running with colleagues in the Windsor Great Park. Further, having access to a seemingly unlimited travel budget opened the door to the cryptographic community widely. Leaving my comfort zone and going to my first cryptography conferences and summer schools, I got to know other researchers. This made it not only more fun - and less scary - to go to conferences in later years, but also proved invaluable for the exchange of research ideas, for starting new collaborations and working together with people across borders during...