Combinatorial Problems in Cryptography and Communication

This grant aims to support a visit by Prof. Tuvi Etzion, from Technion, Israel, to Royal Holloway, University of London.Prof. Etzion is an expert in coding theory and sequence design, areas of mathematics that began in the 1940s and which have exploded in importance as digital communication and storage (with applications to computers communicating via phone lines, mobile phones, wireless computing and deep space probes amongst others) have become ubiquitous. His research underpins techniques to reduce transmission errors in these applications, and has relevance to new areas such as optical storage media.Royal Holloway has a world leading group in cryptography, the science of making and breaking secret codes. Though cryptography often thought of in terms of its traditional role in preserving the confidentiality of messages, there are other applications which include authenticating messages (verifying that a computer is authorised to make an online transaction, for example) which have made cryptographic techniques vital to the modern world.The aim of the visit is to exchange ideas and problems in our respective areas of expertise, in the hope that progress will be made in solving problems that cannot be solved using techniques from one area alone.