From ancient hieroglyphics to secret decoder rings to World War II Enigma code-makers and code-breakers, cryptography has always held a particular fascination for us. But few of us have the skills – or can actually do the math – to unlock the mysteries of encrypted data. Fortunately, Dr. Kristin Lauter, distinguished mathematician, founder of the Women in Numbers Network, and Principal Researcher and Research Manager for the Cryptography Group at Microsoft Research, can. And she is using her powers for good, not for evil!

Today, Dr. Lauter tells us why she feels lucky  to do math for a living, explains the singular beauty of elliptic curves and the singular difficulty of supersingular isogeny graphs, talks about how homomorphic encryption – part of the field of Private AI – allows us to operate on, while still protecting, our most sensitive data, and shares her dream of one day, seeing a Grace Hopper-like conference to celebrate women in mathematics.