Due to severe increase and abuse by students sending generic requests to many people, we can no longer filter spam from serious requests. The following guidelines must be followed to apply to LASEC or to request a support letter. Any other request may just be discarded without any notification. We do apologize to serious students for this additional burden. We do assure that we will treat and answer their request in due course.

Projects / studies / research job applications to LASEC

If you are a student applying for any project work within LASEC, please proceed along the following guidelines.

Internal EPFL students applying for a semester project or master thesis

• please first have a look at https://lasec.epfl.ch/teaching.php
• please prepare an (informal) application letter explaining what you already did within LASEC (lectures, previous projects), why you are applying (motivation), what is your schedule (starting-ending dates)
• please contact the person of contact indicated next to the project proposal.

External students applying for a master thesis

• be aware that LASEC does not provide financial support to undergraduate students: students come with their own fellowship
• please prepare an application letter explaining what is your education background, why you are applying (motivation), what is your schedule (starting-ending dates), and provide the name and email addresses of professors we could contact to support your application
• please send your application to the LASEC secretary (Sylvie Buchard).

Foreign students applying for summer internship whatsoever

• there is a centralized application service. Please go to https://ic.epfl.ch/SummerAtEPFL.

Students applying for a PhD position

• application for PhD must be done to our graduate school - please visit https://go.epfl.ch/edic
• you can contact us in parallel by providing your CV, the list of (all) lectures you attended to including the exam grades (when available), and the name and email addresses of professors we could contact to support your application. You can do so via sending an email to job_lasec@epfl.ch

PhDs applying for a postdoc position

• please prepare an application letter explaining your motivation, provide your CV
• provide the name and email addresses of professors we could contact to support your application
• please send your application to job_lasec@epfl.ch

Support letter requests

If you are a student requesting a support letter for any application, please proceed along the following guidelines.

Internal EPFL students applying for an internship or master thesis

• please send your request to the head of LASEC (Prof. Serge Vaudenay)
• expect a delay - last minute requests will be ignored.
• be aware that we write diligent but fair letters - if you underperformed in one branch we are aware of, this will be mentioned on the letter.

Foreign students applying for Federal subsidies to study at EPFL

• please contact people in the teaching divisions (see https://ssc.epfl.ch) for MSc studies and in EDIC (see https://phd.epfl.ch/edic) for PhD studies.
• if your project studies have nothing to do with information security nor cryptography, please ask to another lab (see https://ic.epfl.ch)

Other cases

• please first consider you may not be asking to the right place
• please clearly explain your case, make clear that you have read this page, and send your request to the head of LASEC (Prof. Serge Vaudenay).

Information on how to contact people at LASEC

You can contact us by email (see our directory https://lasec.epfl.ch/people.php). Please mention that you have read this document.