December 1, 2005

Distinguished lecturer to address voting system security

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Ron Rivest of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology will speak on "Security of Voting Systems" as part of Purdue University's Samuel Conte Distinguished Lecture Series.

Rivest will speak at 2:30 p.m. on Monday (Dec. 5) in the Krannert Auditorium, Room 140. The talk is free and open to the public.  

"Our society depends on honest, accurate voting. Newer, computerized voting technology offers the potential for speedier counts and greater access, but also poses new challenges for accuracy and transparency," said Gene Spafford, professor of computer science and executive director of Purdue's Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security. "Recent discrepancies in elections conducted with electronic voting machines have raised significant issues about their accuracy. Professor Rivest will discuss recent developments in e-voting systems, and will also describe some promising directions for resolving concerns associated with them."

Rivest is the Viterbi Professor of Computer Science in MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Together with Adi Shamir and Len Adleman, he has been awarded the 2000 IEEE Koji Kobayashi Computers and Communications Award and the Secure Computing Lifetime Achievement Award. He has also received, together with Shamir and Adleman, the 2002 ACM Turing Award.

Rivest is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Sciences, and is a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery, the International Association for Cryptographic Research, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Initiated in 1994, the Samuel D. Conte Distinguished Lecture Series hosts speakers on topics of importance to the world of computer science. Conte was the founder and first head of Purdue's computer science department, which was the first such department in the country. Conte, who died in 2002, was one contributor to the endowment that supports the annual lecture series for the benefit of Purdue's faculty, students and the general public.

Writer: Chad Boutin, (765) 494-2081, cboutin@purdue.edu

Source: Gene Spafford, (765) 494-7805, spaf@purdue.edu

Purdue News Service: (765) 494-2096; purduenews@purdue.edu

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