Monica Nevins, University of Ottawa

Postdoctoral Fellows

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 Visiting Assistant Professor, National Tsing Hua 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.

Doctoral

E. Tiwari, 2020-.
Her research centers on Bruhat-Tits theory, towards examining the unicity of types of supercuspidal representations.
S. Bairakji, 2020-.
Her research centers on constructing supercuspidal representations of SO(5).
M. 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 (submitted 2023) includes many of the results of his thesis.
A. 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.
C. 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.
A. 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.
T. 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.

Master's

L. Maddison, 2023--
Her research, as part of the uOttawa Quasar group, focusses on the cryptanalysis of proposed post-quantum cryptosystems.
T. 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.
M. 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 Quantropi.
M. 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.

H. 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.

M. 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.

T. 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).

M. 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.

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

R. 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 is currently pursuing his PhD in cryptography at SITE, University of Ottawa.
K. 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.
N. 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.
C. Dionne, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, 2007--2009.
His thesis was entitled "Deligne-Lusztig Varieties", and was nominated for a University award. He is currently working in industry, in the field of data science.
A. 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.
C. 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.
M. 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.
M. Comeau, co-supervised with Dr. Richard Blute (Department of Mathematics and Statistics), 2004-2006.
His M.Sc. thesis was entitled "Braided Frobenius Algebras". He is 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.
T. 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.

Undergraduate Researchers (including advanced high school students)

S. Larose, NSERC USRA, working on division algebras over p-adic fields, Summer 2023.
Y. Du, UOttawa coop research assistant, working on the explicit classification of anisotropic tori in SO(4) and SO(5), Summer 2023.
R. Sundararajan, Mitacs Globalink Internship, working on analytic and representation theoretic questions over p-adic fields and the adèles, Summer 2023.
Z. Karaganis, High school coop research assistant, Classification of quadratic forms over Q_p with applications to the Hasse-Minkowski Theorem, Winter/Summer 2023.
K. Spasojevic, Undergraduate Research Thesis (MAT4900), Structure theory of p-adic groups via the Bruhat-Tits building, Fall 2021.
N. Gnan, Quasar Research Assistant (coop), Overview of McEliece Cryptosystem and its security, Winter 2021.
A. Kis, Quasar Research Assistant (coop), The Hidden Subgroup Problem in Certain Nilpotent p-Groups, Winter 2021.
F. Stojanovic, Quasar Research Assistant, An overview of symmetric alternant codes and the structural cryptanalysis of their corresponding McEliece schemes," Fall 2020.
F. Stojanovic, NSERC USRA, A consideration of attacks and theory in code-based cryptography," Summer 2020.
K. Spasojevic, Quasar Research Assistant, "A Partial Cryptanalysis of BIKE's Key Encapsulation Mechanism", Summer 2019.
E. Rozon, Undergraduate Research Thesis (MAT4900), "Quadratic forms over p-adic fields: a classification problem," Fall 2018.
A. McSween, Co-op student, Report on r-Associativity classes in affine reflection groups, Summer 2017.
S. Harrigan, NSERC USRA, Lattice-Based Cryptography and the Learning with Errors Problem, Summer 2017.
S. Harrigan, Undergraduate Research Opportunity Award, "Lattice-Based Cryptography and the Learning with Errors Problem", 2016-17.
E. Lal. Online Research Coop program, Foundation for Student Science and Technology. Mathematical Cryptography, Spring 2016.
T. 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.
F. Paquet-Nadeau, Work-study, working on associativity classes of the finite reflection group of type C_n, Summer 2014.
N. Redding, Research grant, working on associativity classes in the finite and affine reflection groups of type B_n, Summer 2014.
R. Khalil, Undergraduate Research Opportunity Award, "Cryptology and RSA: A Mathematical Approach," Winter 2014.
S. Banerjee, MITACS Globalink Scholarship, working on a variety of topics including aspects of homotopy and homology theory, Summer 2011.
S. 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.
M. Turgeon, Undergraduate Research Project MAT4900, "Representation theory of p-adic algebraic groups", Fall 2010.
L. Charette, Co-op student, working on Lie algebras and symplectic forms, Summer 2010.
S. 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.
M. Turgeon, Work-study, on combinatorial aspects of Coxeter systems and Bruhat-Tits theory, Summer 2009.
J. 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.
L. Charette, NSERC USRA, working on the representation theory of finite groups and Young diagrams, Summer 2008.
J. Lefebvre, reading course MAT3141 as well as NSERC USRA research project on nilpotent orbits of p-adic groups, Summer 2007.
C. Dionne, research project on p-adic groups, Summer 2007.
S. Down, reading course on finite fields and constructible numbers, Summer 2007.
G. Giordano and C. Dionne, reading course on Lie algebras, Summer 2006.
C. 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.
C. Dionne. Reading course on tensor algebras, representation theory of finite groups and advanced linear algebra, Summer 2005.
K. Jarvis. NSERC USRA, Representation theory of finite groups, Summer 2004.
M. Comeau and M. Parent. Representation theory of finite groups and p-adic numbers, Summer 2003.

Undergraduate Developers of Teaching Materials

A. Selwah, C. Wan, S. Jiang : Brightspace and Möbius developers. Working as a team with myself and fellow professors Benoit Dionne, Elizabeth Maltais and Joseph Khoury, they brought the Calculus Readiness Module to life on Brightspace (in both official languages) and developed a suite of Möbius questions for use in MAT1339/1739, and much, much more. Summer 2021.
N. Vingerhoeds, L. Wang and Y. BH Hassine : Möbius developers. Working as a team with myself and Elizabeth Maltais, these students created a large supply of pre-Calculus and also Calculus III questions in Möbius as well as revising and adding clarifying formatting to many of the preceding database. Summer 2020.