Douglas received an M.Sc. from Oxford in 2004 and a Ph.D. from Waterloo in 2009. His Ph.D. thesis was on Classical Authenticated Key Exchange and Quantum Cryptography. Douglas held academic appointments at the Queensland University of Technology from 2009 to 2016, and at McMaster University from 2016 to 2018.
Douglas's research is in cryptography, with a focus on the theory and applications of authentication and key exchange protocols. He has developed security models that were used to give provable security analyses of Internet security protocols such as SSL/TLS, Secure shell (ssh), Tor, and Signal. His current focus is on the development of practical post-quantum key exchange and authentication, especially involving lattice-based cryptography. The list of his publications can be viewed on Google Scholar.