Event Description
Drexel’s College of Computing & Informatics is pleased to present the 14th Annual Jay Modi Distinguished Lecture with Dr. Chris Peikert on “From Theory to Practice, and Back Again: A Tale of Lattice Cryptography.”
This event is open to the Drexel community. No registration is required.
About the Talk:
Since the advent of modern (public-key) cryptography in the mid 1970s, security has almost entirely relied on the belief that a few special mathematical problems, like factoring large integers, are infeasible to solve. What if this belief is wrong?
Our faith has been tested since 1994, when Shor showed how to break all widely used public-key cryptosystems using a quantum computer. While real quantum computers are still in their early stages, they are advancing rapidly, and future ones would be able to decrypt today's encrypted communications.
Coincidentally(?), soon after Shor's work, cryptosystems based on the entirely different mathematics of "point lattices" were proposed. At the start, they were poorly understood, inefficient, and had limited capabilities — but they also had unique and compelling theoretical properties, including apparent resistance to quantum attacks. Today, they have been selected for standardization and deployment by NIST and other organizations, and they are also expanding the frontier of advanced functionality across cryptography.
This talk will survey how, over the course of 25 years, lattice-based cryptosystems grew from theoretical curiosities to real-world standards for the quantum future. And it will look ahead, to speculate how today's theory might affect practice in the coming decades
About the Speaker:
Chris Peikert, PhD is a professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor). He works on designing secure, efficient and powerful cryptographic tools using lattices. His research has been instrumental to the theory and practice of several post-quantum cryptography standards. He is the recipient of a Sloan Foundation Fellowship, an NSF CAREER Award, the TCC Test of Time Award, and multiple best paper awards.
About the Lecture:
This lecture is held to honor former Drexel Computer Science Professor Pragnesh Jay Modi (1975-2007) and his contributions to the field of artificial intelligence. Learn more at drexelcci.info/jaymodi
This lecture will be recorded and available on the College of Computing & Informatics' YouTube page. |
