I am Ricardo Rodriguez Reveco, a PhD student in the Symmetric Cryptography group of Ruhr Universität Bochum, supervised by Gregor Leander. I am currently focused on primitives based on the chi (χ) function and, on the side, on connections between cryptography, Boolean functions and learning theory.

Papers

• A Quasidifferential Analysis of the Wrong-Key Randomization Hypothesis (with Tim Beyne, Gregor Leander and Mariia Mutkovina). To appear in IACR Transactions on Symmetric Cryptology (ToSC) 2026, Issue 3. [ePrint 2026/1848]
• Explaining Explainable AI: Boolean Functions and the SHAP–Relevancy Gap (with Marcelo Arenas). To be presented at Boolean Functions and their Applications (BFA) 2026.

About me

Before my PhD, I was a graduate student at PUC-Chile and the Millennium Institute for Foundational Research on Data, and worked as a part-time lecturer at Universidad Adolfo Ibañez and PUC.

My research interests are broad, mainly about cryptanalysis and the use of automated tools for it (SAT/SMT/MILP). Also I have a sweet spot for underanalyzed assumptions in cryptanalysis and key-dependent behaviours, like fixed-key vs average-key effects.

I studied mathematics as an undergraduate at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, and did a master degree in computer science supervised by Prof. Marcelo Arenas. With Marcelo we worked on studying FPRAS algorithms for counting problems on the #P complexity class. Previously, we worked on a complexity analysis of a formalization of Schelling’s model of segregation and on combinatorial problems related to blockchains.