Aug
26
Our new DCS faculty member Vinod Vaikuntanathan will be teaching the following grad course this Fall. It should be of interest to people who want to learn about cryptography and/or the combinatorics of lattices. COURSE NUMBER: CSC 2414F (Fall 2011) ** NEW TIME: Tuesday 3-5 (room BA B025) ** COURSE TITLE: Topics in Applied Discrete Math: Lattices in Computer Science Course Description: Integer lattices are powerful mathematical objects that have found applications in many diverse facets of computer science, most notably in the areas of cryptography and combinatorial optimization. This course gives an introduction to the theory of integer lattices -- their algorithms and applications to combinatorial optimization, their recent use in cryptography culminating in the first construction of a fully homomorphic encryption scheme, and the fascinating complexity landscape associated with lattice problems. This course will touch several related areas and applications: • Algorithms and Combinatorial Optimization (1/4): The asymptotically fastest Integer Programming algorithm known to date is based on lattices. We will study lattice algorithms and their applications to combinatorial optimization. • Cryptography (3/4): Lattices have proven themselves to be a double-edged sword in cryptography. While they were first used to break cryptosystems, they have more recently been instrumental in designing a wide range of secure cryptographic primitives, including public key encryption, digital signatures, encryption resistant to key leakage attacks, identity based encryption, and most notably, the first fully homomorphic encryption scheme. Prerequisites: We will assume knowledge of basic math (linear algebra and probability) and introductory level algorithms (analysis of algorithms, polynomial time and NP-hardness). We will NOT assume any prior knowledge of cryptography or advanced complexity theory.
no comment as of now