Michael J. Jacobson Jr.

Background and research interests

Michael Jacobson is a professor in the Computer Science department at the University of Calgary.  His main research interests are computational number theory and applications to public-key cryptography. In addition to fundamental questions in computational number theory, his research deals with cryptographic protocols based on certain number theoretic structures, aiming to improve their efficiency and better understand their security. By working towards more efficient algorithms for arithmetic in class groups of number fields and algebraic curves, we achieve faster cryptosystems.  By studying problems such as the discrete logarithm problem in these settings through algorithm development and benchmarking, we achieve a better understanding of the security of these systems in practice.