Congratulations to Alfred Menezes, professor of Combinatorics & Optimization, who has been named a Fellow of the International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR). The Fellows program, which was established in 2004, is awarded to no more than 0.25% of the IACR’s 3000 members each year and recognizes “outstanding IACR members for technical and professional contributions to cryptologic research.”
Menezes is a venerable member of the cryptological community: he has worked extensively on elliptic curve cryptography, provable security, and post-quantum cryptography, and is a co-author of the widely-used books Handbook of Applied Cryptography (1996) and Guide to Elliptic Curve Cryptography (2004).
“I am retiring next year, so the IACR Fellowship is nice ‘icing on the cake,’” Menezes says.
Menezes is a long-term member of the department of Combinatorics and Optimization, where he has worked since 1998. “Professor Menezes has made enormous contributions to the promotion and communication of cryptology in the wider scientific community,” says fellow C&O professor and nominator Douglas Stebila. “He is one of the most highly cited cryptographers in the world.”
Menezes is also an alum of the University of Waterloo, earning his BMath, MMath, and PhD here. He remains grateful, he says, to his PhD supervisor Scott Vanstone (who passed away in 2014), “for hiring me as an undergraduate research assistant in 1986, introducing me to the field of cryptography, and giving me a good taste for mathematical, practical, and commercial aspects of cryptography.”
Professor Menezes’ achievements have inspired me since long before I joined Waterloo,” says fellow C&O professor David Jao, who was one of Menezes’s nominators for the honour. “His foundational results in elliptic curve cryptography and key exchange have been transformative in their fields and continue to play a large role even today in helping to drive progress forward. I am delighted that his lifetime body of work is being recognized with the status of IACR Fellow. It is a well-deserved award and a testament to Waterloo’s research excellence.”