During my study leave in August-September 1999 I attended the CRYPTO'99 Conference in Santa Barbara, California. This is one of three international conferences held each year by the International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR): CRYPTO is held in the USA, EUROCRYPT in a different European city each year (this year in Prague), and ASIACRYPT (this year in Singapore). I am a member of the Asiacrypt Steering Committee as an Australian representative this year.
The conference was very well organized by the University of California at Santa Barbara Conferences Services and the work of the Program Chair, Program Committee and General Chair ensured the continuing, highest calibre content for the conference. I was able to catch up on the latest developments in Cryptology and meet with leading international experts.
Following this conference I travelled to Athens where I worked with Dr Christos Koukouvinos and Stelios Georgiou of the National Technical University of Athens and Dr Marilena Mitrouli of the University of Athens on research associated with my large ARC grant.
Research in Greece allowed us to complete and submit the research for four papers:
I was able to purchase important research books and tools for our students. Again I was fortunate that the Star Alliance airlines subsidised Australian research by not charging excess baggage.