The New DIMACS/Simons Collaboration in Cryptography
[June, 2015] DIMACS announces an upcoming Special
Focus on Cryptography as part of a broader partnership with
the Simons Institute for the
Theory of Computing. The new DIMACS/Simons
Collaboration in Cryptography features activities at both
DIMACS and the Simons Institute, bringing together cryptographers
and others to advance the state of the art in cryptography toward
systems that are simultaneously highly efficient, highly secure, and
highly functional. About the new venture, DIMACS Director Rebecca
Wright says, “We are pleased to be partnering with the Simons
Institute on this exciting topic. Cryptography requires both
theoretical and practical advances, and we believe our joint program
will contribute to dramatic progress in the field.”
Cryptography is one of the most important tools in securing data,
communication, and cyberinfrastructure. Driven by ever-increasing
amounts of data and the associated computational demands,
organizations and individuals are outsourcing storage and
computation to “the cloud.” As our e-mail, medical, financial, and
other personal information increasingly reside in systems outside of
our direct control and are of increasing value to attackers, the
need to simultaneously guarantee privacy, availability of data, and
correctness of computations is paramount. This digital reality poses
complex challenges to cryptography and requires a paradigm shift in
our goals and mode of thinking. Overarching goals of the
collaboration include expanding our understanding of such things as:
how to verify the correctness of outsourced computations; what
primitives and performance can be obtained from specific
intractability assumptions; how to provide selective access to parts
of encrypted data; the implications of fundamental tradeoffs and
impossibility results; and how best to drive adoption by system
designers and implementers of more secure technologies and
practices. By studying these and other questions, the collaboration
seeks to enable foundational theoretical advances in cryptography
together with practical advances in its usability.
The DIMACS/Simons Collaboration kicks off with an intensive Program in
Cryptography underway at the Simons Institute during the
summer of 2015, and it continues with the two-year Special Focus on
Cryptography at DIMACS scheduled to start in late 2015. Beginning
with a Cryptography
Boot Camp to introduce key themes, the Simons program brings
together over 90 long-term participants with a strong focus on the
foundations of cryptography and related new mathematical questions.
The Simons program also includes workshops on Securing
Computation and on the Mathematics
of Modern Cryptography.
The DIMACS Special Focus builds on the Simons program to involve a
broader range of people, bringing cryptographers together with other
security researchers, programming language researchers, and software
engineers. It aims to advance the state of the art and practice of
cryptography via research visits, sponsorship of NYCryptoDay, and
seven additional workshops that are currently being planned on the
topics of:
• Cryptography
for Big Data
• Cryptography
and its Interactions: Learning Theory, Coding Theory, and Data
Structures
• Cryptography for
the RAM Model of Computation
• Advances and
Limits of Program Obfuscation
• Efficient and
Usable Secure Computation
• Complexity
of Cryptographic Primitives and Assumptions
• Outsourcing
Computation Securely
Both DIMACS and the Simons Institute coordinate many of their
activities around designated scientific themes (like cryptography).
While themed programs at the Simons Institute typically span a
single semester, DIMACS special foci typically span several years.
The Collaboration in Cryptography aims to leverage these different
timescales. The intense focus and energy of the Simons program will
launch the collaboration and build momentum around the cryptography
theme, while the longer time afforded by the DIMACS special focus
will allow ideas to broaden and develop more fully. Simons Institute
Director Richard Karp says, “This exciting partnership will engage a
broad community of researchers and practitioners, and promises to
spur progress in both the theory and the practice of cryptography.”
The Collaboration in Cryptography is the first between the two
centers, and both Karp and Wright hope that it will be a model for
future such collaborations. In addition to DIMACS and the Simons
Institute, the Collaboration in Cryptography is working with the Center for Encrypted
Functionalities at UCLA, the Modular Approach to
Cloud Security project at Boston University, and the Data Science Institute
at Columbia University on individual workshops to be held as part of
the DIMACS special focus.
If you would like to receive updates and announcements about future activities associated
with the special focus you can
subscribe to the mailing list.
The DIMACS/Simons Collaboration in Cryptography is funded by the
National Science Foundation as a research coordination network under
award CNS-1523467.
The Simons Institute program is supported in part by a grant from
the Simons Foundation.
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