AES and SHA3 were invented by Belgians
One of the four authors of Keccak (the basis of SHA-3) seems to be Italian, and another introduces himself as "citizen of planet Earth 1.0".
It seems that fact is hardly a coincidence.
Two data points is too small a sample to draw a firm conclusion there's a causal factor, much less which. And if we want to hypothesize one such factor, we should use Occam's razor and consider the simplest ones.
Do the AES guys & SHA3 guys know each other?
Yes. One of the four authors of Keccak is one of the two authors of the earlier Rijndael (the basis of AES). I think at least 4 or the 5 authors have some link to the Catholic University of Leuven (Louvain in French¹).
Do they have an MIT-like institution in (Belgium)?
That KU Leuven university is renowned, and has long been. In the subfield of cryptography it has a strong COSIC entity. For a partial illustration see this page, or perhaps that search engine. That entity's earlier work includes the study of efficient implementations (fast/small/low power), with ties to two major Smart Card actors in Europe, and efficiency was an important factor in the selection criteria of both AES and SHA-3.
¹ For non-Europeans: a fact about Belgium is it's sharp divide between Flemish(≈Dutch)-speaking and French-speaking (making English the safe choice in many social, academic and business situations). Factoid: KU Leuven and UC Louvain are two separate universities; they appear separately in these stats.
