Maria Corte-Real Santos

Maria Corte-Real Santos is a post-doctoral researcher at École Normale Supérieure de Lyon (ENS de Lyon), affiliated with the Unité de Mathématiques pures et appliquées (UMPA). Her research focuses on post-quantum cryptography, particularly isogeny-based systems and computational number theory. Previously, she completed her PhD at University College London (UCL), specializing in cybersecurity and information security under the supervision of Philipp Jovanovic and Sarah Meiklejohn. She holds an undergraduate and master’s degree in Mathematics from the University of Cambridge, focusing on Algebraic Number Theory and Elliptic Curves.

She organizes The Isogeny Club, a collaborative platform for researchers in isogeny-based cryptography. Her work includes contributions to SQIsign, a post-quantum signature scheme, and SuperSolver, an algorithm accelerating isogeny-based cryptographic computations. She has presented at numerous conferences, including the SQIparty workshop, Séminaire d’arithmétique à Lyon, and MIT’s Cryptography and Information Security Seminar, discussing topics like isogeny graphs, cryptographic smooth neighbors, and dimension-2 isogeny problems.

Her research emphasizes practical applications of isogeny-based cryptography, including optimizing algorithms for efficiency and security. She actively engages in academic outreach through blog posts and talks, demystifying complex cryptographic concepts for broader audiences.