Peikert received the award for his proposal “Lattices in Cryptography.” Peikert’s research involves using geometric objects called "lattices" as a new mathematical foundation for cryptography. The advantages of using lattices lies in that they cannot be broken by “quantum” computers, and the crypto generated can be very fast and efficient on parallel processors.

“The goal is to do as much interesting cryptography as possible with lattices—securely and efficiently,” Peikert said.

Kim earned her CAREER award for the proposal “CPU- and GPU-Based Heterogeneous Architecture Design and Managements.” Her research involves investigating a new resource management system that uses analytical and statistical models to predict application performance and energy consumption behaviors. These models will be also used for exploiting heterogeneous architecture design choices.

“Heterogeneous architectures are becoming the new trend of computing platforms,” Kim said. “Really soon, smartphones and tablets such as iPhone and the Android will have them as well. More and more people will care about computing efficiency because of battery life. Our research will develop new hardware and software cooperative mechanisms to increase performance but also to use less power.”

To learn more about their proposal or read the full abstract, visit the NSF website for Peikert and Kim.