They are all cryptographers and at least three of them have deep academic backgrounds... Guido Bertoni: http://www.informatik.uni-trier.de/~ley/db/indices/a-tr

They are all cryptographers and at least three of them have deep academic backgrounds... Guido Bertoni: http://www.informatik.uni-trier.de/~ley/db/indices/a-tree/b/Bertoni:Guido.html http://www.informatik.uni-trier.de/~ley/db/indices/a-tree/b/... Joan Daemen: http://www.informatik.uni-trier.de/~ley/db/indices/a-tree/d/Daemen:Joan.html http://www.informatik.uni-trier.de/~ley/db/indices/a-tree/d/... Gilles Van Assche: http://www.informatik.uni-trier.de/~ley/db/indices/a-tree/a/Assche:Gilles_Van.html http://www.informatik.uni-trier.de/~ley/db/indices/a-tree/a/... Joan Daemen has a PhD, his thesis was "Cipher and Hash Function Design. Strategies based on linear and differential cryptanalysis" Gilles Van Assche was a PhD student at the University of Brussels studying "classical and quantum information theory" (http://gva.noekeon.org/ http://gva.noekeon.org/)