mathematics

Kristin Lauter

Kristin Lauter is a mathematics topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Kristin Lauter rather than just read about it. In short: Kristin Estella Lauter (born 1969) is an American mathematician and cryptographer whose research interest is broadly in application of number theory and algebraic geometry in cryptography. She is particularly known for her work in the area of elliptic curve cryptography.

Key takeaways

Kristin Lauter belongs to mathematics; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Kristin Lauter to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Kristin Lauter from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Kristin Estella Lauter (born 1969) is an American mathematician and cryptographer whose research interest is broadly in application of number theory and algebraic geometry in cryptography. She is particularly known for her work in the area of elliptic curve cryptography. She was a researcher at Microsoft Research in Redmond, Washington, from 1999–2021 and the head of the Cryptography Group from 2008–2021; her group developed Microsoft SEAL. In April 2021, Lauter joined Facebook AI Research (FAIR) as the West Coast Head of Research Science. She became the President-Elect of the Association for Women in Mathematics in February 2014 and served as President February 1, 2015 - January 31, 2017.

Education and career Lauter received her Bachelor of Arts, Master of Science, and Ph.D., all in mathematics, from the University of Chicago, in 1990, 1991, and 1996, respectively. Prior to joining Microsoft, she held positions as a visiting scholar at Max Planck Institut fur Mathematik in Bonn, Germany (1997), T.H. Hildebrandt research assistant professor at the University of Michigan (1996-1999), and a visiting researcher at Institut de Mathematiques Luminy in France (1999). In 1999, Lauter joined Microsoft to work on her research in cryptography. She has worked on developing new cryptographic systems, research on post quantum systems, and researching to find faults in current cryptographic systems. In 2005, she worked with coworkers at Microsoft to develop a cryptographic algorithm from supersingular isogeny graphs. She created a HASH function from it and presented it at the NIST hash function competition. Dr. Kristin Lauter is also known for her work in homomorphic encryption, which has been commonly used in machine-learning, building mathematical models, private AI, and the collection of genomic data. She has also worked on encryption with the Cloud. She has given many tutorials on homomorphic encryption for broad audiences. A specific tutorial on homomorphic encryption allowed her to meet some iDASH organizers to whom she explained her encryption techniques, such as edit distance and chi-squared statistics. Beginning in April 2021, Lauter joined Facebook AI Research as West Coast Head of Research Science, leading the Seattle and Menlo Park Labs with groups in Core Machine Learning, Computer Vision, Robotics, Natural Language Processing, and other areas.

Service She is a co-founder of the Women in Numbers Network, a research collaboration community for women in number theory. The first conference was held in 2008 and it was called the WIN Conference. Groups of number theorists work on research and have published about 50 papers. She served on the Advisory Board of the Banff International Research Station and on the Council of the American Mathematical Society. She served as president of the Association for Women in Mathematics 2015–2017. From 2014 to 2016, Lauter served as a Council Member at Large for the American Mathematical Society. She currently is serving a second term on the board of trustees of the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute (MSRI); her terms on the MSRI Board run from 2018–2026.

Recognition Lauter and her coauthors were awarded the Selfridge Prize at ANTS VIII for their paper Computing Hilbert Class Polynomials. She was elected to the 2015 Class of Fellows of the American Mathematical Society "for contributions to arithmetic geometry and cryptography as well as service to the community." In 2017, she was selected as a fellow of the Association for Women in Mathematics in the inaugural class. She was chosen as the Pólya Lecturer for the Mathematical Association of America, lasting from 2018–2020. In 2020 she was elected a fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) with the citation "Kristin E. Lauter, Microsoft Research, is being recognized for the development of practical cryptography and for leadership in the mathematical community." In 2020, she was elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, in the Section on Mathematics. In 2021, Lauter was elected as an honorary member of the Royal Spanish Mathematical Society. Real Sociedad Matemática Española (RSME), founded in 1911, is the oldest mathematical society of Spain. In 2022 she was selected to be the SIAM Block Community Lecturer.

References

External links Meet a mathematician! Video Interview

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Kristin Lauter

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Kristin Lauter claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In mathematics, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Kristin Lauter before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Kristin Lauter ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Kristin Lauter

In research: Kristin Lauter appears in mathematics research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Kristin Lauter in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Kristin Lauter is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1969 births, 20th-century American mathematicians, 20th-century American women mathematicians, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Kristin Lauter outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Kristin Lauter in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Kristin Lauter means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Kristin Lauter out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Kristin Lauter in simple terms?

Why does Kristin Lauter matter?

Because it connects several mathematics ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Kristin Lauter?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Kristin Lauter.