His research centers on the design, analysis, and implementation of symmetric-key primitives, specifically block and stream ciphers, hash functions, and authentication codes. From 2008-2013 he coordinated the hash function working group of the European Union's ECRYPT II Network of Excellence. Dr. Rechberger is a co-designer of the lightweight block cipher PRINCE and of the hash function Grøstl, which was a finalist for the NIST SHA-3 Hash Algorithm Competition.