RSA Award for Excellence in Mathematics

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RSA Conference Award for Excellence in Mathematics
Awarded forOutstanding achievements in cryptographic research defined broadly
Presented byThe RSA Conference
First awarded1998

The RSA Conference (RSAC) Award for Excellence in Mathematics is an annual award. It is announced at the annual RSA Conference in recognition of innovations and contributions in the field of cryptography. An award committee of experts, which is associated with the Cryptographer's Track committee at the RSA Conference (CT-RSA), [1] nominates to the award persons who are pioneers in their field, and whose work has had applied or theoretical lasting value; the award is typically given for the lifetime achievements throughout the nominee's entire career. Nominees are often affiliated with universities or involved with research and development in the information technology industry. The award is cosponsored by the International Association for Cryptologic Research.

Contents

While the field of modern cryptography started to be an active research area in the 1970s, it has already contributed heavily to Information technology and has served as a critical component in advancing the world of computing: the Internet, Cellular networks, and Cloud computing, Information privacy, Privacy engineering, Anonymity, Storage security, and Information security, to mention just a few sectors and areas. Research in Cryptography as a scientific field involves the disciplines of Mathematics, Computer Science, and Engineering. The award, which started in 1998, is one of the few recognitions fully dedicated to acknowledging experts who have advanced the field of cryptography and its related areas (another such recognition is achieving the rank of an IACR Fellow).

The first recipient of the award in 1998 was Shafi Goldwasser. Also, many of the award winners have gotten other recognitions, such as other prestigious awards, and the rank of fellow in various professional societies, etc.

Research in Cryptography is broad and is dedicated to numerous areas. In fact, the award has, over the years, emphasized the methodological contributions to the field which involve mathematical research in various ways, and has recognized achievements in many of the following crucial areas of research:

To further read on various aspects of cryptography, from history to areas of modern research, see Books on cryptography.

It is worth noting that in addition to the Award for Excellence in Mathematics which recognizes lifetime achievement in the specific area of Cryptographic research, the RSA conference has also presented a separate lifetime achievement awards in the more general field of information security. Past recipients of this award from the field of cryptography include:

Past recipients

YearRecipientCitation /Major Achievements
1998 Shafi Goldwasser For pioneering theoretical foundations of modern cryptography.
1999 John Pollard For major contributions to algebraic cryptanalysis of integer factorization and discrete logarithm.
2000 Ralph Merkle For co-inventing public-key cryptography: the idea of key exchange and the Merkle's Puzzles. [6]
2001 Scott Vanstone For outstanding contributions to applied cryptography. [7]
2002 Don Coppersmith For exceptional contributions to symmetric and asymmetric Cryptanalysis. [8]
2003 Mihir Bellare and Phillip Rogaway For major contributions to practice oriented secure cryptography.
2004 Silvio Micali For pioneering theoretical foundations of modern cryptography.
2005 Dan Boneh For innovative designs of cryptographic primitives. [9]
2006 Oded Goldreich For basic contributions to the foundations of cryptography. [10]
2007 Jacques Stern For contributions to mathematical techniques underlying proofs of cryptographic protocols and cryptanalysis. [11]
2008 Arjen Lenstra For contributions to computational number theory, including to integer factorization. [12]
2009 Neal Koblitz and Victor Miller For inventing elliptic-curve cryptography. [13]
2010 David Chaum For innovating cryptographic anonymity primitives. [3]
2011 Charles Rackoff For computational complexity oriented cryptography, including co-inventing zero-knowledge proofs. [4]
2012 Eli Biham For symmetric key cryptanalysis, in particular for co-inventing differential cryptanalysis. [5]
Mitsuru Matsui For symmetric key cryptanalysis, in particular for inventing linear cryptanalysis. [5]
2013 Jean-Jacques Quisquater For contributions to cryptographic engineering: hardware, standards, and practical zero-knowledge authentication. [14]
Claus P. Schnorr For contributions to hardware oriented efficient practical zero-knowledge authentication and signatures. [14]
2014 Bart Preneel For contributions to applied cryptography and to the cryptanalysis and design of cryptographic hash functions. [15]
2015 Ivan Damgård For contributions to cryptographic hashing principles and to cryptographic protocols. [16]
Hugo Krawczyk For contributions to hashing based message authentication codes and to applied key-agreement protocols. [16]
2016 Ueli Maurer For contributions to Information-theoretic Cryptography and to analysis of cryptographic schemes. [17]
2017Tatsuaki OkamotoFor contributions to numerous primitives and protocols within public-key cryptography. [18]
2018 Ran Canetti For contributions to the foundations of secure multi-party computation. [19]
Rafail Ostrovsky For contributions to the theory and to new variants of secure multi-party computations. [19]
2019 Tal Rabin For contributions to distributed cryptographic protocols: Multi-Party Computations, threshold cryptography, and signature schemes. [20]
2020 Joan Daemen and Vincent Rijmen For major contributions to symmetric key cryptography, including the development of the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES)]. [21]
2021 David Pointcheval For developing Provable security arguments for applied Public-key cryptographic systems and protocols. [22]
2022 Cynthia Dwork and Moni Naor For contributions to the foundation of privacy and to the foundations of cryptography. [23]
2023 Paul Carl Kocher For pioneering contributions to cryptographic hardware, and side channel attacks in particular. [24]
2024 Craig Gentry and Oded Regev For major contributions to Lattice-Based Cryptographic Encryption, especially for the highly utilized `Learning with Error’ based cryptosystem, and the first ‘Fully Homomorphic Encryption’ cryptosystem [25]

See also

Notes

Here are a few examples of videos from the award ceremonies and interviews with award winners; these give some more information about each specific award year, and demonstrate the breadth of research behind each such an award:

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References

  1. ↑ "The Cryptographer's Track at RSA Conference (CT-RSA)" . Retrieved 2019-01-24.
  2. ↑ "RSA Conference Recognizes Axway CSO Dr. Taher Elgamal for Lifetime Achievement in Information Security". Reuters. 2009-04-22. Archived from the original on 2013-11-10. Retrieved 2013-03-20.
  3. 1 2 "RSA Conference 2010 Honors Information Security and Cryptography Experts with 13th Annual Awards Program (pages 6-7)" (PDF).
  4. 1 2 "RSA® Conference 2011 Announces Recipients of 14th Annual Awards Program". www.businesswire.com. 2011-02-16. Retrieved 2019-01-16.
  5. 1 2 3 "RSA® Conference 2012 Announces Recipients of 15th Annual Awards Program". www.businesswire.com. 2012-02-29. Retrieved 2019-01-16.
  6. ↑ "Ralph Merkle | Computer History Museum". www.computerhistory.org. Retrieved 2019-01-16.
  7. ↑ "CERTICOM FOUNDER RECEIVES SECURITY AWARD FOR MATHEMATICS FROM RSA". www.certicom.com. Retrieved 2019-01-16.
  8. ↑ "Don Coppersmith Wins RSA Security Award for Mathematics 2010, IT History". 21 December 2015.
  9. ↑ "Co-founder of Voltage Security Wins RSA Award". www.SecurityInfoWatch.com. 16 February 2005. Retrieved 2019-01-16.
  10. ↑ https://wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il/awards-and-appointments/prof-oded-goldreich Oded Goldreich Awards
  11. ↑ "Ingenico Group - Ingenico's board member Professor Jacques Stern wins the 2007 RSA® Award for Excellence in the Field". www.ingenico.com. 22 February 2007. Archived from the original on July 3, 2022. Retrieved 2019-01-16.
  12. ↑ "Prof. L. Arjen - RSA Award for excellence in the field of Mathematics". 2008-12-31.
  13. ↑ "RSA Awards 2009". 22 April 2009.
  14. 1 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCZURH0RBYM Jean-Jacques Quisquater and Claus Schnorr RSA CONFERENCE 2013 ANNOUNCES RECIPIENTS OF 16th ANNUAL AWARDS FOR EXCELLENCE IN MATHETMATICS
  15. ↑ "Bart Preneel receives excellence in mathematics award". 21 February 2014.
  16. 1 2 https://www.rsaconference.com/industry-topics/video/2015-excellence-in-the-field-of-mathematics-award RSA Conference 2015 Announces Recipients Of 18th Annual Awards For Excellence In Mathematics
  17. ↑ "RSA Conference 2016 Announces Recipients of Annual Awards" (Press release). March 2016.
  18. ↑ "RSA® Conference 2017 Closes with Record Attendance" (Press release). 17 February 2017.
  19. 1 2 "RSAC 2018 Unveils Recipients of Annual Awards | RSA Conference". www.rsaconference.com. Retrieved 2019-01-16.
  20. ↑ "RSA Conference 2019 Announces Recipient of Annual Award for Excellence in the Field of Mathematics" (Press release). 5 March 2019.
  21. ↑ "RSA Conference 2020 Announces Excellence in the Field of Mathematics Award" (Press release). 25 February 2020.
  22. ↑ "RSA Conference 2021 Announces Recipient of Annual Award for Excellence in the Field of Mathematics".
  23. ↑ "RSA Conference 2022 Announces Recipient of Annual Award for Excellence in the Field of Mathematics".
  24. ↑ "RSA Conference 2023 Announces Recipient of Annual Award for Excellence in the Field of Mathematics".
  25. ↑ "RSA Conference 2024 Announces Annual Awards".
  26. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-248cGfwy4 Victor Miller
  27. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnX2U2V6OMc Neal Koblitz
  28. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCZURH0RBYM Jean-Jacques Quisquater and Claus Schnorr
  29. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oc9XZd9Hn1s Bart Preneel
  30. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cl6gCWVr0Q8 Hugo Krawczyk
  31. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujDBrNLP8LY Ueli Maurer
  32. ↑ https://www.rsaconference.com/speakers/tal-rabin Tal Rabin
  33. ↑ RSA Conference 2020 Excellence in the Field of Mathematics Award. YouTube . Archived from the original on 2021-12-10.
  34. ↑ Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine : RSA Conference 2021 Award for Excellence in the Field of Mathematics. YouTube .
  35. ↑ https://www.rsaconference.com/library/Video/2023-rsa-conference-math-award
  36. ↑ https://www.rsaconference.com/library/presentation/usa/2024/rsac%20math%20award%20presentation
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