Victor Shoup

Victor Shoup is a computer scientist and mathematician. He obtained a PhD in computer science from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1989,[1] and he did his undergraduate work at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire.[2] He is a professor at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University, focusing on algorithm and cryptography courses. He is currently a Principal Research Scientist at DFINITY and has held positions at AT&T Bell Labs, the University of Toronto, Saarland University, and the IBM Zurich Research Laboratory.[3]

Shoup's main research interests and contributions are computer algorithms relating to number theory, algebra, and cryptography. His contributions to these fields include:

• The Cramer–Shoup cryptosystem asymmetric encryption algorithm bears his name.
• His freely available (under the terms of the GNU GPL) C++ library of number theory algorithms, NTL, is widely used and well regarded for its high performance.
• He is the author of a widely used textbook, A Computational Introduction to Number Theory and Algebra, which is freely available online.
• He has proved (while at IBM Zurich) a lower bound to the computational complexity for solving the discrete logarithm problem in the generic group model. This is a problem in computational group theory which is of considerable importance to public-key cryptography.
• He acted as editor for the ISO 18033-2 standard for public-key cryptography.[4]
• One of the primary developers of HElib.