The extraction of private, uniformly random bits from weakly random seeds is a problem of central importance in cryptography with multiple applications. A well-known result in classical computer science states that randomness extraction is possible using classical resources only when multiple independent sources are available. On the other hand, Quantum Entanglement enables a solution to the problem even in the so-called device-independent framework. Device-Independent quantum cryptography offers the highest form of security, wherein the users do not need to even trust the devices executing the cryptographic protocol, and can instead verify correctness and security by means of simple statistical tests on the devices. In this talk, we report on the state-of-art theoretical and experimental results on device-independent quantum cryptography, with a focus on quantum randomness amplification and quantum key distribution.
Professor Ramanathan’s main research interests are in Quantum Cryptography, specifically Randomness Amplification, Expansion and Key Distribution, and Foundations of Quantum Mechanics. He has 42 refereed publications in these areas, including 10 papers in Physical Review Letters, 3 in Nature Communications and 2 in npj Quantum Information. He received his B.Eng. degree from the Nanyang Technological University and received his MSc and PhD in Physics at the National University of Singapore. Before joining HKU, he was a Research Fellow at The National Quantum Information Centre at The University of Gdansk, The Universite Libre de Bruxelles and University of Oxford.
Clean water and clean air are vital for public health. This project focuses on developing high-efficiency and environmentally sustainable filters for removing harmful air/water pollutants. The team has developed novel architectures and functionalities for the filters to achieve high permeance, high removal efficiency, and excellent reusability.
