Sarah Flannery (born 1982,

County Cork County Cork ( ga, Contae Chorcaí) is the largest and the southernmost county of Ireland, named after the city of Cork, the state's second-largest city. It is in the province of Munster and the Southern Region. Its largest market towns are ...

, Ireland) was, at sixteen years old, the winner of the 1999 Esat Young Scientist Exhibition for her development of the

Cayley–Purser algorithm The Cayley–Purser algorithm was a public-key cryptography algorithm published in early 1999 by 16-year-old Irishwoman Sarah Flannery, based on an unpublished work by Michael Purser, founder of Baltimore Technologies, a Dublin data security comp ...

, based on work she had done with researchers at

Baltimore Technologies Baltimore Technologies was a leading Irish internet security firm, with its headquarters in Dublin, Ireland. It was listed on the London Stock Exchange and was briefly part of the FTSE 100 Index during 2000. Fran Rooney was the CEO for a period ...

during a brief internship there. The project, entitled "Cryptography – A new algorithm versus the RSA", also won her the EU Young Scientist of the Year Award in 1999.

Biography

Flannery's education included a primary all-girls school and secondary education at Scoil Mhuire Gan Smál in Blarney. Following the competition win, in 2001 Flannery co-authored ''In Code'' with her father, mathematician David Flannery. It tells the story of the making and breaking of the algorithm, as well as the enjoyment she got from solving mathematical puzzles while growing up. She dedicates many of her accomplishments in the fields of mathematics and cryptography to her father's support during her childhood. She studied

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 Applied science, practical discipli ...

Peterhouse Peterhouse is the oldest constituent college of the University of Cambridge in England, founded in 1284 by Hugh de Balsham, Bishop of Ely. Today, Peterhouse has 254 undergraduates, 116 full-time graduate students and 54 fellows. It is quite o ...

, a college of the

University of Cambridge , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

, graduating in 2003, and, as of 2006, worked for

Electronic Arts Electronic Arts Inc. (EA) is an American video game company headquartered in Redwood City, California. Founded in May 1982 by Apple employee Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer game industry and promoted the d ...

as a software engineer. She worked at

TirNua RockYou was a company that developed widgets for MySpace and implemented applications for various social networks and Facebook. Since 2014, it has engaged primarily in the purchases of rights to classic video games; it incorporates in-game ads an ...

as a "Chief Scientist". She developed the virtual economy in the game and the back-end web services that powered the game features. She has also worked at RockYou, and several other institutions involved in software development and computer science. Before working at TirNua, Flannery was software engineer working directly with then Electronic Arts Worldwide Chief Technology Officer, Scott Cronce, and, later, with many fellow Tirnua founders on her first virtual world. At EA, she successfully set up the EA Open Source program using the Essential Project. Flannery created data visualizations on software architecture and game content creation which were used to directly impact the quality of both. She also successfully ran and turned around the virtual economy within EA-Land (formerly

The Sims Online ''The Sims Online'', also known as ''EA-Land'', was a massively multiplayer online variation on Maxis' computer game ''The Sims''. It was published by Electronic Arts and released in December 2002 for Microsoft Windows. The game was sold in retai ...

). Previously, she worked on the technical and scientific computing software product

Mathematica Wolfram Mathematica is a software system with built-in libraries for several areas of technical computing that allow machine learning, statistics, symbolic computation, data manipulation, network analysis, time series analysis, NLP, optimizat ...

for

Wolfram Research Wolfram Research, Inc. ( ) is an American multinational company that creates computational technology. Wolfram's flagship product is the technical computing program Wolfram Mathematica, first released on June 23, 1988. Other products include Wo ...

. The lights on St. Patrick's Street, one of the main thoroughfares of Flannery's home city of Cork, are named after her. Flannery is the sister of the singer and songwriter

Mick Flannery Mick Flannery (born 28 November 1983) is an Irish singer and songwriter. His debut album ''Evening Train'' resulted from his time spent studying music and management at Coláiste Stiofáin Naofa in Cork. It featured tracks which had previously ...

Bibliography

* (2000) Sarah Flannery and David Flannery.
In Code: A Mathematical Journey
' 271 pages, Pub. London : Profile, * (2002) Sarah Flannery and David Flannery.
In Code: A Mathematical Journey
' revised, 341 pages, Pub. Chapel Hill, N.C. : Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill,

References

External links

Mathematica and the Science of Secrecy

Sarah's cracking algorithm

homepage
at TirNua {{DEFAULTSORT:Flannery, Sarah 1982 births 20th-century Irish people 21st-century Irish people Living people Alumni of Peterhouse, Cambridge Irish mathematicians Irish women mathematicians Women mathematicians People from County Cork Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition

Biography

Bibliography

See also

References

External links