Students and postdocs

Dr. Ali Assem Abdelkader Mahmoud, 2020-2021, Quasar postdoctoral fellow, co-supervised with Hadi Salmasian and Anne Broadbent.  Now at the Perimeter Institute.

Dr. Peter Latham, 2019-2021.  Now a data scientist in the UK.

Dr. Wan-Yu Tsai, 2018-2019, co-supervised with Hadi Salmasian.  Now Assistant Professor, National Central University, Taiwan.

Dr. Aaron Christie, 2013-2015.  Now working for the Federal Government in Ottawa.

Dr. Ariane Masuda, 2007-2009, NSERC postdoctoral fellow, co-supervision with Ali Miri, SITE.  She is now Associate professor at CityTech, CUNY, New York, USA.

Dr. Peter Campbell, 2003-2005, CRM postdoctoral fellow.  He now works for a mathematically talented organization in England.

Ekta Tiwari, 2020-.
Her research centers on Bruhat-Tits theory, towards examining branching rules to a maximal compact open subgroup of supercuspidal representations of U(1,1).

Serine Bairakji, 2020-.
Her research centers on constructing supercuspidal representations of SO(5).

Mengyuan Cao, 2018-2022, co-supervised with Hadi Salmasian.
His thesis The Refined Solution to the Capelli Eigenvalue Problem for gl(m|n)+gl(m|n) and gl(m|2n) centers on the Capelli eigenvalue problem in the setting of Lie superalgebras. Our joint paper (to appear in 2024) includes many of the results of his thesis.

Adèle Bourgeois, 2016-2020.
Her thesis On the Restriction of Supercuspidal Representations: An In-Depth Exploration of the Data is a tour de force of the supercuspidal representations of connected reductive p-adic groups and solves long-standing open problems about the restriction of these representations to groups containing the derived subgroup. The thesis is substantial and carefully detailed; a shorter preprint on the arXiv has been published in the Pacific Journal of Mathematics.  She is an adjunct professor at Carleton University.

Camelia. Karimianpour, co-supervised with Dr. Hadi Salmasian, 2010-2015.
Her thesis The Stone-von Neumann Construction in Branching Rules and Minimal Degree Problems solved several problems relating to the representation theory of covering groups of SL2. She is now an Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream, at the University of Toronto.

Anja Becker, co-supervised with Dr. Isabelle Déchène during 2008--2009; she then completed her PhD "The representation technique: Applications to hard problems in cryptography" under the supervision of Antoine Jous at Université de Versailles-St. Quentin en Yvelines, France.
She is now Senior Data Scientist and Information security specialist with Swiss National Railways.

Terasan Niyomsataya, co-supervised with Dr. Ali Miri (SITE), 2005--2008
He completed his master's under our supervision in early 2004 (see below) and continued as our doctoral student. His doctoral thesis is titled "On Designs and Fast Decoding Algorithms of Space Time Codes and Group Codes". His thesis won a University award. He is now working in industry.

Laura Maddison, 2023--2024
Her thesis, entitled Cryptanalysis of Multivariate-Based Post-Quantum Digital Signature Schemes included an analysis of three distinct schemes, one of which was published:  "A Classically Efficient Forgery of MPPK/DS Signatures," La Matematica (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s44007-024-00095-0.  Her research was conducted as part of the uOttawa Quasar group.

Trinity Chinner, 2019--2021
Her thesis, entitled Elliptic Tori in p-adic Orthogonal Groups gives the full classification of elliptic maximal tori in the special orthogonal groups of degree 4, the essential first ingredient for enumerating the supercuspidal data for these groups using the construction of JK Yu. She is now working as a Methodologist at Statistics Canada.

Maria Perepechaenko, 2019-2020.
Her thesis, entitled Hidden subgroup problem: about some classical and quantum algorithms, tackled several instances of the hidden subgroup problem, with particular emphasis on the dihedral group in the quantum case. She completed a Mitacs internship with Sectigo during her MSc and is now working at Qrypt in Ottawa.

Mingzhe Yu, 2020. His memoir "On p-adic fields and p-adic groups" developed the background for understanding some key questions in the representation theory of p-adic groups.

Hayley Tomkins, co-supervised with Dr. Hadi Salmasian, 2016-2018. In her thesis Alternative Generators of the Zémor-Tillich Hash Function: A Quest for Freedom in Projective Linear Groups, she gave a novel new construction of a vast set of free subgroups of GL(n,k), where \(k=\mathbb{F}_q((t))\) is the field of Laurent polynomials over a finite field. She then applied this to construct an infinite family of hash functions satisfying the short modifications detection property, which are natural generalizations of the ZesT hash functions. In 2019 she was invited to present her work at Nutmic, and in 2020, a paper from her thesis was published in the Journal of Mathematical Cryptology. 

Mengyuan Cao, co-supervised with Dr. Hadi Salmasian, 2016-2018. In his thesis Representation Theory of Lie Colour Algebras and Its Connection with the Brauer Algebras, he explores a version of Schur-Weyl duality in the novel setting of Lie color algebras. He wrote a careful synthesis of a lot of material, and then extended the results in a 1998 paper by G. Benkart, C.L. Shader and A. Ram to include some borderline cases.

Tantely Rakotoarisoa, 2015-2017. His thesis The Bala-Carter Classification of Nilpotent Orbits of Semisimple Lie Algebras presents an expanded proof of the celebrated Bala-Carter theorem, as well as a detailed example of its application to the classification of nilpotent orbits in the Lie algebra so(8). 

Melanie Pabstel, 2014-2017. Her thesis Parameter Constraints on Homomorphic Encryption Over the Integers explores a cryptographic scheme posessing homomorphic properties, proposed by van Dijk, Gentry, Halevi, and Vaikuntanathan in 2010. In her thesis, she offers a careful analysis of many assertions in the original paper regarding the parameter constraints necessary for security and functionality, and offers some refinements.

Mamadou Pouye, Master 2, AIMS-Senegal, 2015.  Mémoire: Les algèbres de Lie sur un corps quelconque, 

Dang Nguyen, 2012-2013 + Fall 2017. His memoir Correspondence between elliptic curves in Edwards-Bernstein and Weierstrass forms completes the proof of this correspondence and elaborates on the range of its existence. Edwards-Bernstein curves have useful applications to elliptic curve cryptography, being affine and having a one-step formula for their group operations. 

Renaud Brien, co-supervised with Dr. Hadi Salmasian, 2010-2012.  His thesis Normal Forms in Artin Groups for Cryptographic Purposes was on generalizations of braid groups, called Artin groups, with a view towards their suitability for use in cryptography. He went on to earn his PhD and works as a research at Cyber Québec.

Katherine Jarvis, 2009--2011.  Her thesis NTRU over the Eisenstein Integers was on the development and implementation of a cryptographic system called ETRU, which is a variant of the popular cryptosystem NTRU in which the integers are replaced by the Eisenstein integers. We subsequently published a paper together in the journal Designs, Codes and Cryptography.

Nick Mailloux, co-supervised with Dr. Isabelle Déchène and Dr. Ali Miri, 2008--2009.
His thesis was entitled "Group Key Agreement from Bilinear Pairings", and was nominated for a University award. He is currently working in industry, in the field of computer science.

Chris Dionne, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, 2007--2009.
His thesis was entitled "Deligne-Lusztig Varieties", and was nominated for a University award. He earned his PhD from Queen's University is currently working in industry, in the field of data science.

Augusto Lima, co-supervising with Dr. Ali Miri (SITE), 2007--2010
His thesis, entitled "Relay Attack on RFID systems: analysis and modelling", included estimating the maximum distance at which a relay attack could be successful. He went on to complete his PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Carleton University in 2017, while continuing his successful career in industry.

Camelia Karimianpour, co-supervised with Dr. Ali Miri (Department of Mathematics and Statistics), 2006-2007.
Her master's thesis was entitled "Lattice-Based Cryptosystems". She later returned to pursue doctoral studies in algebra and representation theory with myself and Dr. Hadi Salasian.

Michel Parent, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, 2004-2007.
His master's thesis was entitled "Affine Reflection Groups and Bruhat-Tits Buildings". He is currently working for MBNA Bank.

Marc Comeau, co-supervised with Dr. Richard Blute (Department of Mathematics and Statistics), 2004-2006.
His M.Sc. thesis was entitled "Braided Frobenius Algebras". He completed his doctorate under the supervision of Dr. Blute and also earned a degree in Education. He is currently a high school teacher in the Ottawa area.

Terasan Niyomsataya, co-supervised with Dr. Ali Miri (SITE), 2002-2004.
His M.Sc. thesis was entitled "New Unitary Space-Time Codes with High Diversity Products". He continued on to the PhD.

Zander Karaganis, High school AP research assistant, Branching rules for supercuspidal representations over Q_2, 2023-2024.

Simon Larose, NSERC USRA, Central Division Algebras over a non-archimedean local field , Summer 2023.

Yueyang Du, UOttawa coop research assistant, working on the explicit classification of anisotropic tori in SO(4) and SO(5), Summer 2023.

Raghuram Sundararajan, Mitacs Globalink Internship, working on analytic and representation theoretic questions over p-adic fields and the adèles, Summer 2023.

Zander Karaganis, High school coop research assistant, Classification of quadratic forms over Q_p with applications to the Hasse-Minkowski Theorem, Winter/Summer 2023.

Katarina Spasojevic, Undergraduate Research Thesis (MAT4900), Structure theory of p-adic groups via the Bruhat-Tits building, Fall 2021.

Nolive Gnan, Quasar Research Assistant (coop), Overview of McEliece Cryptosystem and its security, Winter 2021.

Anna Kis, Quasar Research Assistant (coop), The Hidden Subgroup Problem in Certain Nilpotent p-Groups, Winter 2021.

Filip Stojanovic, Quasar Research Assistant, An overview of symmetric alternant codes and the structural cryptanalysis of their corresponding McEliece schemes," Fall 2020.

Filip Stojanovic, NSERC USRA, A consideration of attacks and theory in code-based cryptography," Summer 2020.

Katarina Spasojevic, Quasar Research Assistant, "A Partial Cryptanalysis of BIKE's Key Encapsulation Mechanism", Summer 2019.

Eric Rozon, Undergraduate Research Thesis (MAT4900), "Quadratic forms over p-adic fields: a classification problem," Fall 2018.

Alexandra McSween, Co-op student, Report on r-Associativity classes in affine reflection groups, Summer 2017.

Stephen Harrigan, NSERC USRA, Lattice-Based Cryptography and the Learning with Errors Problem, Summer 2017.

Stephen Harrigan, Undergraduate Research Opportunity Award, "Lattice-Based Cryptography and the Learning with Errors Problem", 2016-17.

Erica Lal. Online Research Coop program, Foundation for Student Science and Technology. Mathematical Cryptography, Spring 2016.

Tobias Bernstein, NSERC USRA, "Rational nilpotent orbits of p-adic classical groups," Summer 2015. He wrote a report A Classification of p-adic Quadratic Forms and his work led to a joint paper Nilpotent Orbits of Orthogonal Groups over p-adic Fields, and the DeBacker Parametrization published in 2019.

Tran Van Do, MITACS Globalink Scholarship, "On cuspidal representations of finite groups of Lie type", Summer 2014.

France Paquet-Nadeau, Work-study, working on associativity classes of the finite reflection group of type Cn, Summer 2014.

Nigel Redding, Research grant, working on associativity classes in the finite and affine reflection groups of type Bn, Summer 2014.

Rana Khalil, Undergraduate Research Opportunity Award, "Cryptology and RSA: A Mathematical Approach," Winter 2014.

Siddartha Banerjee, MITACS Globalink Scholarship, working on a variety of topics including aspects of homotopy and homology theory, Summer 2011.

Simon Fortier-Garceau, NSERC USRA Fellowship, working on p-adic numbers as well as finite and affine reflection groups (towards the study of buildings of p-adic groups!), Summer 2011.

Maxime Turgeon, Undergraduate Research Project MAT4900, "Representation theory of p-adic algebraic groups", Fall 2010.

Laurent Charette, Co-op student, working on Lie algebras and symplectic forms, Summer 2010.

Steven Amelotte, Co-op student, working on space-time codes, the Cayley-Dickson construction, and applications of representation theory to the design of codes, Summer 2010.

Maxime Turgeon, Work-study, on combinatorial aspects of Coxeter systems and Bruhat-Tits theory, Summer 2009.

Jonathan Lemaire-Beaucage, NSERC USRA with Dr. Barry Jessup, working on the representation theory of finite groups and the cohomology of nilpotent Lie algebras, Summer 2008.

Laurent Charette, NSERC USRA, working on the representation theory of finite groups and Young diagrams, Summer 2008.

Jérémie Lefebvre, reading course MAT3141 as well as NSERC USRA research project on nilpotent orbits of p-adic groups, Summer 2007.

Chris Dionne, research project on p-adic groups, Summer 2007.

Stacie Down, reading course on finite fields and constructible numbers, Summer 2007.

Gaël Giordano and Chris Dionne, reading course on Lie algebras, Summer 2006.

Chris Dionne. Work-Study, doing research on induced representations of finite groups, and the construction of representations of GL(2) over a finite field, Summer 2006.

Chris Dionne. Reading course on tensor algebras, representation theory of finite groups and advanced linear algebra, Summer 2005.

Katherine Jarvis. NSERC USRA, Representation theory of finite groups, Summer 2004.

Marc Comeau and Michel Parent. Representation theory of finite groups and p-adic numbers, Summer 2003.