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The digital revolution is now all-pervasive, charting breakthroughs in computing and information technology. Driving that change is a group of leading innovators across the world. Among them is David Atienza, associate professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and director of the Embedded Systems Laboratory at the School of Engineering, EPFL. In recognition of his outstanding scientific contributions to computing, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) has acknowledged him as a “pioneering innovator” and a “2017 Distinguished Member.”

The widespread availability of video streaming services and the proliferation of smartphones have enabled users to do away with the need to download heavy content and thus save storage space on their devices. But the service provider—be it YouTube, Netflix, or any other—has to face serious challenges in offering a seamless experience to users. Two of the major concerns are storage space on their servers, and the resultant power consumption. Conversely, the user is confronted with challenges like bandwidth issues, unstable streaming flow, and video encoding issues. However, a solution is in the making to enhance the user experience and simultaneously minimize the worries of the service provider.

Providers of payment systems and password-protected applications use advanced computation to ensure security of their services. It is generally accepted that if large numbers are used in developing a code, it becomes extremely difficult to solve the math and break the code. In this process, computation of discrete logarithms plays a crucial part. Until recently, the record for computing a discrete logarithm was in the multiplicative group of a 596-bit prime field. However that has now been surpassed in a collaborative research between EPFL and the University of Leipzig. The team has cracked an extremely lengthy code by using complex mathematical calculations.