Nathan Daly

Why did you choose the Mathematics Department at Virginia Tech?

I chose the VT math department because I saw here a friendly and supportive culture and a community of professors and students who are excited about the same problems as I am: cryptographic problems that live on the border of theory and practice and draw insight from both directions.

Congratulations on your recent SLMath award! Where is it taking you this summer? 

This summer I'm heading to the IBM research laboratory in Zurich, Switzerland for a two-week course on post-quantum cryptography. I will study four families of computational problems (lattices, codes, isogenies, and multivariate polynomials) which will likely be the building blocks for internet security when the problems we use now (factoring and discrete log) are broken by the advent of large-scale quantum computing.

Where can we find you when you're not on campus?

Outside of VT I love to spend time with my friends and church community (often with as large a board game as time permits), and when my social stamina runs out to read a book or ramble over hill and field.

What is your favorite memory as a graduate student?

My favorite memory as a grad student at VT is not any one moment but all the time spent talking and laughing with other math grad students: at a whiteboard, between cubicles, in a restaurant, or over board games.