The Centre for Applied Cryptographic Research (CACR) is a group of industrial representatives, professors, and students at the

University of Waterloo The University of Waterloo (UWaterloo, UW, or Waterloo) is a public research university with a main campus in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. The main campus is on of land adjacent to "Uptown" Waterloo and Waterloo Park. The university also operates ...

in Waterloo,

Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central C ...

, Canada who work and do research in the field of

cryptography Cryptography, or cryptology (from grc, , translit=kryptós "hidden, secret"; and ''graphein'', "to write", or ''-logia'', "study", respectively), is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of adver ...

. The CACR aims to facilitate leading-edge cryptographic research, to educate students at postgraduate levels, to host conferences and research visits, and to partner with various industries. It was officially opened on June 19, 1998. The CACR involves students and professors from four departments at the school: Combinatorics &

Optimization Mathematical optimization (alternatively spelled ''optimisation'') or mathematical programming is the selection of a best element, with regard to some criterion, from some set of available alternatives. It is generally divided into two subfi ...

Computer Science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to practical disciplines (includi ...

Electrical and Computer Engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems which use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

, and Pure Math. It does not have a physical location, but utilizes resources from all the aforementioned departments. The CACR plays a part in many conferences and workshops, including the following: *CACR Information Security Workshop *Privacy and Security Workshop *Workshop on Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) *Workshop on

Selected Areas in Cryptography Selected Areas in Cryptography (SAC) is an international cryptography conference (originally a workshop) held every August in Canada since 1994. The first workshop was organized by Carlisle Adams, Henk Meijer, Stafford Tavares and Paul van Oorsc ...

(SAC) The CACR includes the following notable faculty: *

Scott Vanstone Scott A. Vanstone was a mathematician and cryptographer in the University of Waterloo Faculty of Mathematics. He was a member of the school's Centre for Applied Cryptographic Research, and was also a founder of the cybersecurity company Certico ...

, professor, co-author of the '' Handbook of Applied Cryptography'', founder of

Certicom BlackBerry Limited is a Canadian software company specializing in cybersecurity. Founded in 1984, it was originally known as Research In Motion (RIM). As RIM, it developed the BlackBerry brand of interactive pagers, smartphones, and tablets ...

Alfred Menezes Alfred Menezes is co-author of several books on cryptography, including the ''Handbook of Applied Cryptography'', and is a professor of mathematics at the University of Waterloo in Canada.

, professor, co-author of the ''Handbook of Applied Cryptography'' *

Neal Koblitz Neal I. Koblitz (born December 24, 1948) is a Professor of Mathematics at the University of Washington. He is also an adjunct professor with the Centre for Applied Cryptographic Research at the University of Waterloo. He is the creator of hyp ...

, adjunct professor, creator of

elliptic curve cryptography Elliptic-curve cryptography (ECC) is an approach to public-key cryptography based on the algebraic structure of elliptic curves over finite fields. ECC allows smaller keys compared to non-EC cryptography (based on plain Galois fields) to provide ...

and hyperelliptic curve cryptography * Doug Stinson, professor, author of ''Cryptography: Theory and Practice'' *

Ian Goldberg Ian Avrum Goldberg (born March 31, 1973) is a cryptographer and cypherpunk. He is best known for breaking Netscape's implementation of SSL (with David Wagner), and for his role as chief scientist of Radialpoint (formerly Zero Knowledge Syste ...

, assistant professor, creator of Off-the-Record Messaging

External links

Centre for Applied Cryptographic Research homepage
{{University_of_Waterloo University of Waterloo Cryptography organizations 1998 establishments in Ontario