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 (EMA) in Libreville with the International Center for Pure and Applied Mathematics (ICPAM/CIMPA), March 2015, attended by most of the members of Macisa;

• The visit of Abdoul Aziz Ciss (Dakar) and Emmanuel Fouotsa (Bamenda) to Bordeaux, September 2015, for the Elliptic Curve Cryptography and Summer School conference;

• The visit of Tony Ezome to Bordeaux, October 2015;

• The visit of Damien Robert to Yaoundé, Cameroun, to give courses on cryptography for a special seminar on security event.

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).