ERCIM president Gerard van Oortmerssen (right) presents the Cor Baayen Award to Phong Q. Nguyen during a ceremony in Crete on 31 October 2001.

Phong Q. Nguyen Winner of the 2001 Cor Baayen Award

The annual ERCIM Cor Baayen Award was presented to Phong Nguyen during a ceremony in Crete on 31 October 2001. The award is given every year to the most promising young researcher in computer science and applied mathematics having completed a PhD thesis in one of the ‘ERCIM countries’.

Phong is currently working as a CNRS researcher at the Computer Science Department of the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris. He received his PhD in 1999 from the Université of Paris 7 - Denis Diderot, under the supervision of Professor Jacques Stern. He is an alumni of the Ecole normale supérieure de Lyon (1993-97). He has been working in the highly competitive field of cryptanalysis, in which one tries to attack cryptographic schemes. Cryptography is becoming more and more important, thanks to the development of the Internet and electronic commerce. Phong showed the inadequacy, both from a theoretical and a practical point of view, of several cryptographic schemes proposed in the past few years by eminent cryptographers to replace schemes currently in use. Despite his young age (26), Phong is now regarded by the international cryptographic community as one of the foremost specialists of number-theoretical cryptanalysis.

The Cor Baayen Award for the most promising researcher in computer science and applied mathematics was created in 1995 to honour the first ERCIM President. The award, up to 1998 restricted to researchers working in an ERCIM institute, is now open to any young researcher having completed their PhD thesis in one of the ‘ERCIM countries’, currently: Austria, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Slovakia, Sweden, Switzerland, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.

The award consists of a cheque for 5000 Euro together with an award certificate. The selected fellow will be invited to the ERCIM meetings in autumn.

Cor Baayen Award 2002

Rules for Nomination
Nominations for each country are made by the corresponding ERCIM Executive Committee member (also referred to as the 'national contact'). Those who wish a particular candidate to be nominated should therefore contact the ERCIM Executive Committee member for their country.

Nominees must have carried out their work in one of the 'ERCIM countries' and they must have been awarded their PhD (or equivalent) no more than two years prior to the date of nomination.

Each ERCIM institute is allowed to nominate up to two persons from its country. A person can only be nominated once for the Cor Baayen Award. The selection of the Cor Baayen award is the responsibility of the ERCIM Executive Committee.

How to Nominate
For proposing a nomination to your national contact, fill out the Cor Baayen Award Nomination Form available at the ERCIM website.

Deadline
• 30 April 2002: nominations are to be received by the national contacts.

Further information can be obtained from your national contact or from the ERCIM Cor Baayen Award coordinator Lubos Brim.

Links:
The ERCIM Cor Baayen Award: http://www.ercim.eu/activity/cor-baayen.html
National contacts: http://www.ercim.eu/contacts/execom/

Please contact:
Lubos Brim, CRCIM
Co-ordinator for the Cor Baayen Award
E-mail: lubos.brim@ercim.org