David Jao

I am a professor in the Faculty of Mathematics (https://www.math.uwaterloo.ca/) at the University of Waterloo (https://www.uwaterloo.ca/), working in the Department of Combinatorics and Optimization (https://uwaterloo.ca/combinatorics-and-optimization/). I am also:

• A member of the Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute (https://uwaterloo.ca/cybersecurity-privacy-institute/our-people),
• An affiliated member of the Institute for Quantum Computing (https://uwaterloo.ca/institute-for-quantum-computing/programs/graduate-studies/supervisors),
• Chief Cryptographer at evolutionQ (https://evolutionq.com/about.html).

My research interests are in the areas of number theory (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_Theory) and cryptography (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptography), with emphasis on elliptic (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliptic_Curve_Cryptography) and hyperelliptic curve cryptography (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperelliptic_Curve_Cryptography). The focus of my recent work is on post-quantum cryptography (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-quantum_cryptography) and isogeny-based cryptography (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supersingular_isogeny_key_exchange).

Prior to joining the University of Waterloo, I was a post-doc researcher in the Cryptography and Anti-Piracy Group (https://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/groups/crypto/) at Microsoft Research (https://research.microsoft.com/). I received my Ph.D. in Mathematics (http://www.genealogy.ams.org/id.php?id=71888) from Harvard University (http://www.math.harvard.edu/) under the supervision of Noam Elkies (http://www.math.harvard.edu/~elkies/).