Santiago Zanella, who completed his PhD at the IMDEA Software Institute under the supervision of Prof. Gilles Barthe,
is the winner of the 2011 EAPLS Best Dissertation Award for his dissertation “Formal Certification of Game-Based Cryptographic Proofs” defended at the École Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris in 2010.

This award is given by the European Association on Programming Languages and Systems to the PhD student who has made the most original and influential contribution to the area of Programming Languages and Systems, and has graduated in the period up to November 2011 at a European academic institute. The purpose of the award is to draw attention to excellent work, to help the career of the student in question, and to promote the research field as a whole.

The winner was selected by a committee of international experts. Details on the procedure can be found here. The candidate theses were judged on originality, impact, relevance, and quality of writing.

With this award already two researchers associated with the IMDEA Software Institute have received this prestigious recognition.