Christian Cachin - Bio

Christian Cachin is a professor of computer science at the University of Bern (Switzerland), where he has been leading the Cryptology and Data Security Research Group since 2019. Over his career he worked for IBM Research - Zurich during more than 20 years and has also held visiting positions at MIT, EPFL, and Stanford University. He is an IACR Fellow, ACM Fellow, and IEEE Fellow, recipient of multiple IBM Outstanding Technical Achievement Awards, and has also served as the President of the International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR) from 2014-2019.

With a background in cryptography, he is interested in all aspects of security in distributed systems and especially in cryptographic protocols, consistency, consensus, blockchains, and cloud-computing security. He is known for developing cryptographic protocols, particularly for achieving consensus and for executing distributed cryptographic operations over the Internet. In the area of cloud computing, he has contributed to standards in storage security and developed protocols for key management.

He has co-authored a textbook on distributed computing titled Introduction to Reliable and Secure Distributed Programming. While at IBM Research he made essential contributions to the development of Hyperledger Fabric, a blockchain platform aimed at business use.