Most cryptographic protocols in use today are based on number theoretic problems such as integer factoring. I will give an introduction to lattice-based cryptography, a form of cryptography offering many advantages over the traditional number-theoretic-based ones, including conjectured security against quantum computers. The talk will mainly focus on the so-called Learning with Errors (LWE) problem. This problem has turned out to be an amazingly versatile basis for lattice-based cryptographic constructions, with hundreds of applications. I will also mention work on making cryptographic constructions highly efficient using algebraic number theory (leading to a NIST standard and implementation in browsers such as Chrome), as well as some recent applications to machine learning.
The talk will be accessible to a wide audience.
Bio: Oded Regev is a Silver Professor in the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences of New York University. He received his Ph.D. in computer science from Tel Aviv University in 2001 under the supervision of Yossi Azar, continuing to a postdoctoral fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study. He is a recipient of the 2019 Simons Investigator award, the 2018 Gödel Prize, several best paper awards, and was a speaker at the 2022 International Congress of Mathematicians. His main research areas include theoretical computer science, RNA biology, quantum computation, and machine learning.
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This talk will be recorded and live streamed via Zoom. Please register for Zoom webinar here.