News

The Faculty of SEM has launched its annual Thesis and Post Doc prizes in January 2026 for the best thesis and research output of 2025 affiliated to the University of Warwick.

In a recent work, visiting undergraduate student Yahel Manor and Warwick DCS researchers Jinqiao Hu and Igor Oliveira addressed a fundamental question relevant to the security of cryptographic protocols.

The symmetry of information principle says that the amount of information that a sequence x of bits reveals about another sequence y is essentially the same in either direction. This is known to hold in an idealised world where computations can take an arbitrarily long time, as demonstrated by A. Kolmogorov and L. Levin in the 1970s. In contrast, modern cryptography is built around deliberate asymmetry—for example, functions of the form y = f(x) that are easy to compute but hard to invert (one-way functions).

The new work shows that, once one moves from the idealised setting of time-unbounded computations to the more realistic world of efficient, randomised computations (algorithms that must run quickly and may use randomness), this symmetry can fail in a strong and unconditional way. In other words, computational constraints can yield information asymmetry. In practical terms, this supports the intuition that information may not be extracted efficiently: knowing y = f(x) may not make x efficiently recoverable to the extent that an (ineffective) symmetry principle would suggest, even when x and y are closely related.

Earlier work formally tied an average-case form of this symmetry failure to the existence of one-way functions, the central primitive in cryptography. By proving new failures of symmetry of information, the authors provide concrete progress towards the computational asymmetry that underpins encryption, digital signatures, and many other cryptographic protocols.

This work will be presented at the 58th Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing (STOC) in June 2026 in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA.

Failure of Symmetry of Information for Randomised Computations
Jinqiao Hu (University of Warwick); Yahel Manor (University of Haifa); Igor C. Oliveira (University of Warwick)

The paper describing this research is available here.

Professor Andreas Kyprianou has been named among the founding fellows of the newly established Academy for the Mathematical Sciences (AcadMathSci) — a new national academy created to bring together the UK’s strongest mathematical scientists across academia, education, business, industry, and government to help solve some of the UK’s biggest challenges.

It is with the greatest sadness that we learn of the death of one of the pioneers of the Warwick Physics Department, Professor D. Phil Woodruff, FRS.

For a tribute to Phil see https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/physics/staff/phil_woodruff/Link opens in a new window

Phil’s funeral will be held on at 2 p.m. on 19th March at Harbury church (Church St, Harbury, Leamington Spa CV33 9HE). Family flowers only, please. Donations, if desired, in memory of Phil for the Alzheimer’s Society would be greatly appreciated. Other arrangements will be shared when we have the details.

The Department of Chemistry is seeking colleagues who will establish a vigorous research program that is closely aligned to our priority research themes: Sustainability, Energy and the Environment, Health and Data and Modelling.

Forests were growing on the now-submerged landmass of Doggerland thousands of years earlier than previously believed, according to a major new sedimentary ancient DNA (sedaDNA) study led by Professor Robin Allaby

The findings suggest that Doggerland may have provided a surprisingly hospitable refuge for plants, animals, and potentially humans, thousands of years before forests became widespread across Britain and northern Europe.

Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the research reveals that temperate trees such as oak, elm, and hazel were present more than 16,000 years ago, and even detected DNA from a tree genus thought to have vanished from the region 400,000 years ago. The findings also show that parts of Doggerland survived major flooding events, including the Storegga tsunami around 8,150 years ago, and parts of the landscape remained above water as late as 7,000 years ago.

British Science Week made a triumphant return this year, with the Outreach and Widening Participation team at WMG delivering a host of inspiring events and activities to spark interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics in children across Coventry and beyond. Working closely with colleagues across the University, including Warwick’s Widening Participation team, WMG Outreach delivered ten events — from school visits and hands-on workshops to teacher training — that engaged more than 2,300 students from over 40 schools.

Huge congratulations to Professor Richard Montgomery, who is one of the joint-winners of this year's Adams Prize.

Research Culture Week is coming!

We’re excited to invite all members of Warwick’s research community—researchers at every career stage, research students, technicians, professional services, research professionals to our first ever Research Culture Week, running 23–26 March.

Across four themed days, the programme brings together interactive sessions and workshops (online, in-person and hybrid) aligned with Warwick’s research culture commitments. Just a few of the sessions you can expect across the week are as follows.

🔹 Monday 23 March – Community & Connections

• Launch of Warwick’s Research Culture Roadmap - find out how we engaged the community in developing our institutional priorities and how you can continue to be engaged!
• Research Celebration Awards, recognising the invaluable contributions of our research community

🔹 Tuesday 24 March – Freedom to Grow & Explore

• Career stories: What can I do with a PhD?
• Research‑themed escape room: teamwork and leadership under pressure (note this is an exciting, games based session exploring the concept of research culture!)
• Workshops: Writing Repair Shed and Grant Writing for Success

🔹 Wednesday 25 March – Openness, Integrity & Responsibility

• Research integrity dilemmas: what would you do?
• Trusted Research and informed consent training (with a Taskmaster twist!)
• Research skills sessions with the Library
• ReproducibiliTea journal club

🔹 Thursday 26 March – Thriving on Difference

• Equality Impact Assessment training to support fairer, more inclusive practice
• A session exploring barriers faced by women in academia and sector-level approaches to change
• PATHWAY: Warwick’s pilot Positive Action programme addressing the underrepresentation of Black academics

Whether you’re seeking career development, collaboration, tools for responsible research, or ways to connect with colleagues, there’s something for everyone.

👉 Explore the full programme and sign up for sessions: Research Culture Week Schedule

We really hope to see you there!

Two pieces of evidence they submitted were recently published in support of this: https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/148542/pdf/Link opens in a new window and https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/154425/pdf/Link opens in a new window"