The Wyoming Cryptography School Cohort

Thanks to generous funding from the National Science Foundation, we can offer financial support to six students in mathematics. These students will participate in the regular WCS program. In addition, they will pursue a research problem throughout their senior year, under the supervision of Dr. Mueller and Dr. Gamboa. The cohort will also have opportunities to present their results in local seminars, and hopefully to regional or national conferences, such as the upcoming Pikes Peak Regional Undergraudate Mathematics Conference. While some of the cohort activities will be individual, we want to foster a sense of community through this project. So expect to work together and to discuss your problems and ideas as a group.

The activities for the cohort are as follows:

  1. Summer: For two months in the summer, you will be introduced to several possible research topics and the techniques—from mathematics and computer science—that you will use to solve them. The major goal for the summer will be to select an appropriate topic and decide on some possible avenues for studying it.
  2. Fall: During the fall, you should enroll in Dr. Gamboa's course on Distributed Computing for Applications in Cryptography. You should also sign up for Dr. Mueller's course on Foundations of Cryptography. You are also encouraged to do some independent study with either Dr. Gamboa or Dr. Mueller. This is the time when you will concentrate on answering your research question.
  3. Spring: During the spring you will be learning how to write up your results for publication and how to present them in a seminar.

Being a member of the cohort is a major commitment. In recognition of this, we offer a small stipend to the members. This stipend totals $3,200 during the summer, and $5,000 for the rest of the academic year. I.e., $400/week over the summer, and about $150/week over the year.

So You Want to Join the Cohort

We are looking for exceptional students for the cohort. We prefer students who have already solved previously unsolved problems in mathematics, received the Fields Medal, and discovered the secret of immortality. Failing that, we prefer students who can

  • commit to working throughout the academic year, but we are willing to work with you if you need some time off during the summer or even during the spring semester (e.g., for student teaching),
  • are interested in cryptography and/or computers, and
  • are willing to work together on difficult problems.

In particular, you do not need to know how to program or understand the mathematics of cryptography to participate—we will teach you those things as part of the program.

While anyone meeting these qualifications can join the cohort, only majors in mathematics can be funded by this project. This is an NSF restriction, so there is nothing we can do about it. If you are interested, please talk to Dr. Mueller or Dr. Gamboa.