A Personal Perspective on Quantum Cryptography

The Faculty of Informatics is pleased to announce a seminar given by Gilles Brassard

DATE: Wednesday, May 27th 2015
PLACE: USI Lugano Campus, room A22, Red building (Via G. Buffi 13)
TIME: 10:30

ABSTRACT:
Quantum Cryptography is the first near-term practical application of the emerging field of quantum information science. It enables two parties to exchange messages with provably perfect confidentiality under the nose of an eavesdropper whose computational power is unlimited and whose technology is restricted only by the accepted laws of physics. In this lecture, we shall tell the tale of the origin of Quantum Cryptography from the birth of the first idea by Wiesner in 1970 to the invention of Quantum Key Distribution in 1983, to the first prototypes and ensuing commercial ventures, to successful hacking attacks on imperfect apparatus, to exciting prospects for the future.

BIO:
Professor of computer science since 1979 and Canada Research Chair at the Université de Montréal, Gilles Brassard laid the foundations of quantum cryptography at a time when only a handful of people worldwide were interested in quantum information science. He is also among the inventors of quantum teleportation, which is universally recognized as a fundamental keystone of the discipline. Editor-in-Chief for Journal of Cryptology from 1991 until 1997, he is the author of three books that have been translated into eight languages. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of London, the Royal Society of Canada, the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research and the International Association for Cryptologic Research. Among his many awards, we note the E.W.R. Steacie Memorial Fellowship, the Killam Research Fellowship, the Prix Marie-Victorin, the Rank Prize in Opto-Electronics, the NSERC Gerhard Herzberg Canada Gold Medal for Science and Engineering, the Killam Prize for natural sciences and the Prix d'excellence du FRQNT. Thomson Reuters Citation Laureate, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the ETH in Zürich and has been elected foreign member of the Latvian Academy of Sciences and the Academia Europaea. Recently, he was made an Officer in the Order of Canada. Most recently, he received an honorary doctorate from USI Lugano.

HOST: Prof. Stefan Wolf