With the Science Award 2021, the “Arbeiterkammer of Salzburg” supports students who dedicate themselves to new research questions to promote our society. 19 prizes in four categories were awarded. We are very pleased about the award of Clemens Brunner.

Until August 2021 Clemens was a researcher at the Center for Secure Energy Informatics and is now concentrating on growing his start-up sproof. In his dissertation, he dealt with “Decentralized Trust Management for Privacy-preserving Authentication in the Smart Grid”. The increasing number of different actors and exchanged messages and the trend towards decentralisation due to the integration of renewable energy sources poses new challenges for Smart Grid in the area of authentication. Insecure or deliberately manipulated communication channels increase the risk of an unstable energy grid. Worst case this can lead to a complete power failure. Centrally controlled trust management systems and authentication providers can no longer meet the requirements of decentralised infrastructures and therefore new solutions have to be developed. The dissertation addresses the question of how a practically usable blockchain-based trust network can be created to provide privacy-friendly authentication processes within the smart grid.

Also another two award winners completed their studies in Information Technology & Systems Management at the Salzburg University of Applied Sciences.
Congratulations to:
Dr. Clemens Brunner, MSc BSc
Dipl. Ing. Philipp Grubmüller, BSc
Dipl. Ing. Mario Siller, BSc

Brief presentation of the award winners here.