Adrian Perrig

Perrig made his name around 2000 with protocols for settings where ordinary cryptography is too expensive: TESLA, which authenticates broadcasts to many receivers using keys disclosed after a delay, and SPINS for wireless sensor networks. Both rest on the same insight — time can stand in for public-key cryptography if you're careful about it.

His main project is SCION, a new internet architecture begun at Carnegie Mellon in 2009 that moved with him to ETH Zurich. Instead of trusting BGP neighbours to tell the truth, the sender picks its own path from cryptographically signed options. Where RPKI patches the old system, SCION builds a new one. The spin-off Anapaya has got it into the internal networks of Swiss banks — unusually far for an academic redesign of the internet.