About:

Cryptography has been used in one form or another for over 2000 years by parties wishing to send secret messages. Codes were used by Julius Caesar, the courts of Queen Elizabeth I of England, and King Louis XIV of France, and famously by several countries in World War II. With the rise of the Internet, we now all use encryption several times daily. So, isn't the problem of secret communication solved by now? And, if so, what exactly do cryptographers nowadays work on?

This talk will give a tour of modern cryptography, highlighting how the field has changed -- and expanded in scope -- dramatically from the 1970s to today. Along the way, we will discuss some of the central problems cryptographers are dealing with (and putting into practice) today and see that the central problem of secret communication is (still) not completely solved.

About the speaker:

Jonathan Katz is currently a Senior Staff Research Scientist at Google while on leave from the University of Maryland, where he is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science. Passionate about education, he is a co-author of the widely used textbook “Introduction to Modern Cryptography” (now in its third edition) and also offers a free online course on cryptography through Coursera. He has given several tutorials on cryptography to audiences in academia, industry, and government. Katz has received numerous awards, including an Alexander von Humboldt Research Award, a UMD Distinguished Scholar-Teacher Award, and an ACM SIGSAC Outstanding Contribution Award. He is a fellow of the IACR and the ACM.