Section: Partnerships and Cooperations

International Initiatives

Inria International Labs

The MACISA project-team (Mathematics Applied to Cryptology and Information Security in Africa) is one of the new teams of LIRIMA. Researchers from Inria and the universities of Bamenda, Bordeaux, Dakar, Franceville, Maroua, Ngaoundéré, Rennes, Yaoundé cooperate in this team.

The project is concerned with public key cryptology and more specifically the role played by algebraic maps in this context. The team focus on two themes:

• Theme 1 : Rings, primality, factoring and discrete logarithms;

• Theme 2 : Elliptic and hyperelliptic curve cryptography.

The project is managed by a team of five permanent researchers: G. Nkiet, J.-M. Couveignes, T. Ezome, D. Robert and A. Enge. Since Sep. 2014 the coordinator is T. Ezome and the vice-coordinator is D. Robert. The managing team organises the cooperation, schedules meetings, prepares reports, controls expenses, reports to the LIRIMA managing team and administrative staff.

A non-exhaustive list of activities organised or sponsored by Macisa includes

• The Summer school in M’Bour in Senegal with the International Center for Pure and Applied Mathematics (ICPAM/CIMPA), June 2014;

• The Annual Cameroonian workshop on Cryptography, Algebra and Geometry (CRAG), July 2014;

• The visit of Thierry Mefenza (Cameroun), to École Normale Supérieure de Paris for a PhD Thesis with Damien Vergnault, November 2013 and September–November 2014;

• The visit of Hortense Boudjou (Maroua) to work with Abdoul Aziz Ciss (École Polytechnique de Thièse, Sénégal), May – July 2014;

• The visit of Abdoul Aziz Ciss (Dakar) and Tony Ezome (Franceville) to Bordeaux, September 2014.

• Kodjo Kpognon Egadédé defended his PhD thesis in december 2014 under the supervision of Julien Sebag.

The team was evaluated in September 2014 as part of the general LIRIMA evaluation seminar.

Inria International Partners

Informal International Partners

The team is used to collaborate with Leiden University through the ALGANT program for PhD joint supervision.

Eduardo Friedman (U. of Chile), long term collaborator of K. Belabas and H. Cohen is a regular visitor in Bordeaux (about 1 month every year).