FAU Math Department Hosts Crypto Teens Summer Camp 2026

Florida Atlantic’s Department of Mathematical Sciences welcomed 34 high school students to the sixth annual Crypto Teens in South Florida summer camp from August 3-7. The week-long program was held in the Gruber Sandbox, located in the S. E. Wimberly Library on the university’s Boca Raton campus.

Open to all schools in the South Florida region and beyond, the camp attracted a talented group of students who are passionate about mathematics, computer science and cybersecurity. The week-long program was tailored to their skills sets and emphasized the cutting-edge field of post-quantum cryptography – the area of math that is primarily used to protect personal information in the era of quantum technology.

The program featured stimulating lectures, inspiring talks by industry and academia, as well as engaging exercise sessions. This year’s featured guest speakers were: Allison Bishop, Ph.D., co-founder and president at Proof Trading, visiting assistant professor at The City University of New York (CUNY), and president of the International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR); Arka Rai Choudhuri, Ph.D., research scientist at zkBricks; Jason LeGrow, Ph.D., assistant professor, Department of Mathematics, Virginia Tech University; and Koray Karabina, Ph.D., Cryptography and Quantum Computing team leader at the National Research Council Canada, and associate professor, University of Waterloo. Karabina is now an assistant professor of mathematics within FAU's Charles E. Schmidt College of Science.

Several faculty members from the Schmidt College of Science’s Department of Mathematical Sciences also participated in this year’s program, including Dipayan Das, Ph.D., assistant professor; and Francesco Sica, Ph.D., associate professor.

The camp was sponsored by a grant from the American Mathematical Society (AMS).