Cybersecurity, Mathematics, and Limits on Technology

Ever more connected, the world’s population may continue to rely on the proverbial “chewing gum and bailing wire” for cyberspace security. So says Andrew Odlyzko, a University of Minnesota mathematician and former telecommunications researcher, who is slated to deliver the annual Dalrymple Lecture Thursday (April 2) at the University of Mississippi. “We will never attain a secure infrastructure,” Odlyzko said. “But a combination of technology and traditional tools of human society will prove adequate, and we are unlikely to face disaster.” Odlyzko’s lecture, “Cybersecurity, Mathematics and Limits on Technology,” starts at 6 p.m. in Butler Auditorium. It is free and open to the public. Odlyzko is founding director of the interdisciplinary Digital Technology Center at the University of Minnesota, and he served as interim director at the Minnesota Supercomputing Institute. Before joining academe, he devoted 26 years to research at Bell Telephone Laboratories, which later became AT&T Labs. “Dr. Odlyzko is a renowned mathematician,” said Iwo Labuda, UM mathematics chair. “We look forward to his expertise, and we hope a better appreciation and understanding for the field of mathematics will result from his lecture.” Odlyzko has authored more than 150 technical papers in computational complexity, cryptography, number theory, combinatorics, coding theory, analysis and probability theory, and he owns three patents. He is writing a book that compares the Internet bubble to the British Railway Mania of the 1840s and explores the implications for future technology diffusion. Description written by Ole Miss News.https://egrove.olemiss.edu/math_dalrymple/1007/thumbnail.jp