Xuejia Lai () is a cryptographer, currently a professor at

Shanghai Jiao Tong University Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU) is a public university in Shanghai, China. It is affiliated with the Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China, Ministry of Education of China. The university is part of Project 211, Project 98 ...

. His notable work includes the design of the

block cipher In cryptography, a block cipher is a deterministic algorithm that operates on fixed-length groups of bits, called ''blocks''. Block ciphers are the elementary building blocks of many cryptographic protocols. They are ubiquitous in the storage a ...

IDEA In philosophy and in common usage, an idea (from the Greek word: ἰδέα (idea), meaning 'a form, or a pattern') is the results of thought. Also in philosophy, ideas can also be mental representational images of some object. Many philosophe ...

based on the Lai-Massey scheme, the theory of Markov ciphers, and the

cryptanalysis Cryptanalysis (from the Greek ''kryptós'', "hidden", and ''analýein'', "to analyze") refers to the process of analyzing information systems in order to understand hidden aspects of the systems. Cryptanalysis is used to breach cryptographic se ...

of a number of

cryptographic hash function A cryptographic hash function (CHF) is a hash algorithm (a map (mathematics), map of an arbitrary binary string to a binary string with a fixed size of n bits) that has special properties desirable for a cryptography, cryptographic application: ...

s. His book ''On the Design and Security of Block Ciphers'' () is frequently cited in cryptography papers. Lai received a

B.Sc. A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, B.S., B.Sc., SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree that is awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Scienc ...

electrical engineering Electrical engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the study, design, and application of equipment, devices, and systems that use electricity, electronics, and electromagnetism. It emerged as an identifiable occupation in the l ...

in 1982 and an M.Sc. in

mathematics Mathematics is a field of study that discovers and organizes methods, Mathematical theory, theories and theorems that are developed and Mathematical proof, proved for the needs of empirical sciences and mathematics itself. There are many ar ...

in 1984 at Xidian University (then known as ''Northwest Institute of Telecommunication Engineering''). About 1982 he met James Massey, who was visiting the university to give lectures in cryptography. Lai served as interpreter for these lectures. He later became one of Massey's doctoral students at

ETH Zurich ETH Zurich (; ) is a public university in Zurich, Switzerland. Founded in 1854 with the stated mission to educate engineers and scientists, the university focuses primarily on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. ETH Zurich ran ...

, where he received his Ph.D. in 1992. Together they designed the IDEA cipher.

External links

Lai's bio at SJTU in Shanghai
(archived 2014)
Lai's faculty page at SJTU in Shanghai
Living people Chinese computer scientists Chinese cryptographers ETH Zurich alumni Modern cryptographers Academic staff of Shanghai Jiao Tong University Year of birth missing (living people) {{crypto-bio-stub