News Highlight

Title: Building Blocks for a Connected Digital World: Reflections on Public-Key Cryptography and the Internet

Speaker: Burt Kaliski, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, Verisign

Date: September 7th, 2012

Time: 2:00pm--3:30pm

Location: EAS 222

Abstract:

Four decades ago, two lines of academic research produced two of the key, transformational ideas that enable the today's connected, digital world: the Internet and public-key cryptography.  These lines of research would interact with each other many ways over the succeeding years, and I've had the privilege of participating in their synergies in several stages of my career.  In this talk, I'll offer some reflections on my three decades working in these fields: as a student in computer science before domain names had dots and web sites had public keys, as a research scientist at a startup company developing early standards and tools for Internet security, and as CTO at one of the enduring companies that emerged from that initial work.  Drawing from my experience as a student, entrepreneur, and executive, the insights will outline a path for moving ideas to implementation, concepts to community, that is just as relevant and arguably even more realizable today.

Biography:

As senior vice president and chief technology officer, Dr. Burt Kaliski Jr. is responsible for the company’s long-term technology vision. He is the leader of Verisign Labs, which focuses on applied research, university collaboration, industry thought leadership, and intellectual property strategy. He also facilitates the technical community within Verisign.

Prior to joining Verisign in 2011, Kaliski served as the founding director of the EMC Innovation Network, the global collaboration among EMC’s research and advanced technology groups and its university partners. He joined EMC from RSA Security, where he served as vice president of research and chief scientist. Kaliski started his career at RSA in 1989, where as the founding scientist of RSA Laboratories, his contributions included the development of the Public-Key Cryptography Standards (PKCS), now widely deployed in internet security.

Kaliski has held appointments as a guest professor at Wuhan University's College of Computer Science, and as a guest professor and member of the international advisory board of Peking University's School of Software and Microelectronics. He has also taught at Stanford University and Rochester Institute of Technology.

Kaliski is a trustee emeritus of the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council, and a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Computer Society and Tau Beta Pi.

Kaliski holds a Bachelor of Science in computer science and engineering, Master of Science in electrical engineering and computer science and doctorate in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where his research focused on cryptography.