Please see the Presentation Schedule for upcoming presentations. Details regarding the presentations will be posted as they become available.

Also, if you are interested in giving a presentation at one of our meetings, please contact the FRAISE Coordinator with the details of the presentation.

Based on the responses that were received regarding availabilities, we have found that Wednesday at 4:30 p.m. is most suitable for the majority of the group. We understand that not everyone will be available for this time, but we are doing our best to accommodate as many group members as possible.

In light of this, our first meeting will be Wednesday March 14, 2012 at 4:30 p.m.

We would like to extend an invitation to interested FRAISE Research Group members to attend an upcoming McMaster University Advanced Optimization Lab (AdvOL) seminar. The details of the seminar are given below:

Date & Time: Tuesday, February 21, 2012       4:30 - 5:30 p.m.

Location: ITB 201

Speaker: Peter Horak
                Department of Mathematics
                University of Washington, Tacoma

Title: Latin Squares in Cryptography

Abstract:
This talk will consist of two parts. The first one is meant for students and those who do not know anything about modern cryptography. Some basic cryptographic principles and methods will be described including RSA public-key and AES systems. The second part of the talk will be devoted to Latin squares, or equivalently, quasigroups. The importance of Latin squares in the contemporary cryptography has been notified for more than a half century since the seminal work of Shanon; and there are many papers on the topic. We will focus on two new applications of Latin squares in the field. In both of them one needs to construct Latin squares whose structure is as “irregular” as possible; that is, Latin squares with suitable cryptographic primitives.

We are beginning to try to re-organize the FRAISE research group for this term. To accomplish this, we need to take care of a few orders of business.

The first order of business is to determine the best time to hold our meetings. We would like to have one seminar per month that would be approximately one hour in length. We are interested in setting a fixed day within the month to have our meetings, for example, every third Thursday of each month.

In order to make this task as simple as possible, a PDF Form has been made for each group member to fill out with their availability for a suitable meeting time. We ask that each group member please fill out the form and send it to the FRAISE Coordinator by February 15, 2012. Based on the results of the forms that are received, the time that best fits the most group members will be determined. The intention is to choose a time in order to have our first presentation in October. Your cooperation with this will be greatly appreciated.

Once we have chosen a suitable time, we will begin to formulate a presentation schedule. Details will follow.