Nigel Smart (cryptographer)

Nigel Smart
Alma mater	University of Reading (BSc), University of Kent (PhD)
Occupation(s)	Cryptographer, Professor
Years active	1992–present
Employer(s)	Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Zama
Known for	Elliptic curve cryptography, pairing-based cryptography, secure multiparty computation
Title	Professor at COSIC, Chief Academic Officer at Zama

Nigel Smart holds a professorship at COSIC within the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and serves as the Chief Academic Officer at Zama. He is an expert cryptographer focusing on both the theoretical foundations and practical implementations of cryptographic methods.

Education

In 1989, Smart obtained a BSc degree in mathematics from the University of Reading. He pursued doctoral studies at the University of Kent, earning his PhD degree in 1992 with a dissertation entitled The Computer Solutions of Diophantine Equations.

Career

Between 1992 and 1995, Smart held research fellow positions at the University of Kent, Erasmus University Rotterdam, and Cardiff University. He then lectured in mathematics at the University of Kent from 1995 until 1997, after which he joined Hewlett-Packard for a three-year tenure (1997–2000). From 2000 through 2017, he directed the cryptology research group at the University of Bristol. Since 2018, he has been engaged part-time as a professor at COSIC, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven.

His honors include receiving a Royal Society Wolfson Merit Award spanning 2008 to 2013 and securing two European Research Council Advanced Grants awarded consecutively from 2011 to 2016 and 2016 to 2021. Between 2012 and 2016, Smart was both director and vice president of the International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR), which also recognized him as an IACR Fellow in 2016.

Research

Prof. Smart is widely recognized for his contributions to elliptic curve cryptography, with particular emphasis on the ECDLP. He played a pivotal role in advancing pairing-based cryptography, including developing key algorithms such as the SK-KEM and the Ate-pairing.

His investigations cover multiple facets of cryptography, notably enhancing practical secure multiparty computation techniques. His significant achievements encompass protocols for two-party computation as well as multiparty computation utilizing somewhat homomorphic encryption.

Collaborating with Gentry and Halevi, Smart participated in executing the first large-scale computation employing Fully Homomorphic Encryption, which garnered the IBM Pat Goldberg Best Paper Award in 2012.

Outside academic circles, Smart co-founded Identum, a startup focused on pairing-based cryptography and identity-based encryption; this company was acquired by Trend Micro in 2008. In 2013, together with Yehuda Lindell, he established Unbound Security (formerly known as Dyadic Security), specializing in distributed cryptographic solutions via multiparty computations; Coinbase acquired Unbound Security in 2021. Additionally, he co-initiated the Real World Crypto conference series alongside Kenny Paterson.

Publications

• Nigel P. Smart, The Algorithmic Resolution of Diophantine Equations, Cambridge University Press, 1998, ISBN 978-0-521-64633-8
• Ian F. Blake, Gadiel Seroussi, Nigel P. Smart, Elliptic Curves in Cryptography, Cambridge University Press, 1999, ISBN 978-0-521-65374-9
• Nigel P. Smart, Cryptography An Introduction, McGraw Hill, 2002, ISBN 978-0-07-709987-9
• I.F. Blake, G. Seroussi, N.P. Smart, Advances in Elliptic Curve Cryptography, Cambridge University Press, 2004, ISBN 978-0-521-60415-4
• Nigel P. Smart (ed.), Cryptography and Coding, Springer-Verlag LNCS 3796, 2005, ISBN 978-3-540-30276-6
• Nigel P. Smart (ed.), Advances in Cryptology - Eurocrypt 2008, Springer-Verlag LNCS 4965, 2008, ISBN 978-3-540-78966-6
• Daniel Page & Nigel P. Smart, What Is Computer Science? An Information Security Perspective, Springer-Verlag, 2014, ISBN 978-3-319-04041-7
• Nigel P. Smart, Cryptography Made Simple, Springer International Publishing, 2015, ISBN 978-3-319-21935-6
• Arpita Patra & Nigel P. Smart, Progress in Cryptology - INDOCRYPT 2017, Springer-Verlag, 2017, ISBN 978-3-319-71667-1