Hi - I’m Stjepan.

I work on cybersecurity and cryptology, with a strong focus on the security of machine learning and hardware/implementation attacks. I hold academic appointments at the University of Zagreb (HR), Radboud University (NL), and the University of Bergen (NO).

What’s new

  • April 2025 Full professor, University of Zagreb, Croatia.
  • January 2025 Adjunct professor, University of Bergen, Norway.
  • August 2024 Elected as a Full professor, University of Zagreb, Croatia.
  • October 2021–present Associate professor, Radboud University, The Netherlands.

Awards & recognition (selected)

  • 2026 Editorial Contribution Award 2026 for International Journal of Information Security.
  • 2026 National Award for Science for 2024 given by the Republic of Croatia.
  • 2026 IEEE Distinguished Contributor Recognition.
  • 2026 Paper "Mind the Portability: A Warrior's Guide through Realistic Profiled Side-channel Analysis" selected as one of the Top Picks in Hardware and Embedded Security 2026.
  • 2026 Paper "Strength in numbers: Improving generalization with ensembles in machine learning-based profiled side-channel analysis" selected as one of the Top Picks in Hardware and Embedded Security 2026.
  • 2025 NeurIPS 2025 Top Reviewer.
  • 2024–2025 Listed in The Stanford/Elsevier Top 2% Scientist Rankings, career-long data.
  • 2025 SaTML 2025 Outstanding Reviewer Award.
  • 2025 Best paper award at EvoStar 2025.
  • 2024 Outstanding Scientific Paper Award from Croatian Institute for Cyber Security.
  • 2024 Outstanding member of the IEEE TIFS Editorial Board Award.
  • 2024 GECCO 2024 Outstanding Reviewer Award.
  • 2024 Fellow of the Young Academy of Europe.

Education

  • PhD in Mathematics, University of Paris 8, Paris, France. Study in the field of abstract algebra and cryptography. Supervised by Prof. Claude Carlet. PhD thesis: Boolean Functions and S-boxes in Cryptography: Properties and Constructions
  • Mar 2008–Jul 2015 Double PhD in Computer Science, Radboud University and University of Zagreb, Nijmegen, The Netherlands, and Zagreb, Croatia. Study in the field of evolutionary computation and cryptography. Supervised by prof. Lejla Batina, prof. Domagoj Jakobovic, and prof. Elena Marchiori. PhD thesis: “Applications of Evolutionary Computation to Cryptology”
  • Sep 2002–Dec 2007 MSc in Electrical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Rijeka, Croatia.

Research Areas

  • Cybersecurity
  • Cryptology
  • Security & privacy of machine learning
  • Machine learning
  • Evolutionary computation
  • Abstract algebra