Nigel Smart

Timeline

1. 1989–2000

   From Reading to Hewlett-Packard

   He receives a BSc from the University of Reading in 1989 and a PhD from the University of Kent at Canterbury in 1992. Research fellowships at the University of Kent, Erasmus University Rotterdam and Cardiff University follow until 1995, and he lectures at Kent from 1995 to 1997. From 1997 to 2000, he spends three years at Hewlett-Packard.

2. 2000–2017

   Founding Bristol's cryptology group

   From 2000 to 2017, he is at the University of Bristol, where he founds the cryptology research group. He holds a Royal Society Wolfson Merit Award from 2008 to 2013 and two ERC Advanced Grants, from 2011 to 2016 and from 2016 to 2021. Trend Micro buys Identum, a start-up he founded, in 2008.

3. 2010–2012

   Homomorphic encryption and a best paper

   In 2010, he and Frederik Vercauteren of KU Leuven devise a way of simplifying Gentry's fully homomorphic encryption scheme so that it becomes more practical, and present it at the 13th IACR workshop on Public Key Cryptography in Paris. The IBM Pat Goldberg Best Paper Award for 2012 goes to his work with Gentry and Halevi on the first large calculation using fully homomorphic encryption.

4. 2013

   Co-founding Unbound Security

   In 2013, he forms Unbound Security with Yehuda Lindell, a company that deploys distributed cryptographic solutions based on multi-party computation. The company is sold to Coinbase.

5. 2014–2016

   IACR vice president and Fellow

   He serves as a director of the International Association for Cryptologic Research from 2012 to 2014 and as its vice president from 2014 to 2016. In 2016, he is named a Fellow of the IACR. He is best known for his work on elliptic curve cryptography and pairing-based cryptography and, more recently, for techniques for computing on encrypted data such as multi-party computation and fully homomorphic encryption.

6. 2018–2022

   Joining COSIC and Zama

   In 2018, he joins the COSIC group at KU Leuven, where he is a part-time professor. In April 2022, Zama announces him as its Chief Academic Officer, in charge of making sure its open-source technology is used for research in academia.

7. March 2026

   The RSAC mathematics award

   In March 2026, RSAC names him a recipient of its Award for Excellence in the Field of Mathematics, together with Yehuda Lindell. The award cites his work on advancing and deploying practical multi-party computation and threshold cryptography, and his contributions to the underlying mathematics of cryptography.

8. As of October 2026

   Chief Academic Officer at Zama

   He is a professor at COSIC at KU Leuven and Chief Academic Officer at Zama. In January 2026, he gives a preview talk on three Zama cryptosystems, the TFHE homomorphic encryption scheme, the ZHEnith zero-knowledge proof system and the Nexus multi-party computation system, which Zama intends to submit to the NIST call for threshold primitives.