Spotlight: Martha Norberg Hovd

What is your educational background and how did you become interested in your field?

I have quite an eclectic educational background, as I have taken degrees in physics, comparative literature, mathematics, and cryptography, some of them at the same time! While I was studying physics, a friend of mine talked me into doing a course on number theory, which snowballed into me taking a course in cryptography years later, and it was the most interesting course I had taken at that point. The fact that very theoretical and abstract mathematics could have such a practical use case as cryptography really fascinated me, and it still does.

What is interesting/important about your field for the ordinary person?

I believe that my field is fundamentally important for absolutely everyone, since cryptography is what provides you with any privacy, be it keeping your online activities from prying eyes, your communication confidential, your health data private, and your bank card secure. Furthermore, cryptography doesn’t just secure individual privacy: the same cryptography is also used to keep state and military information secret, which is essential to national security. 

Big picture: what do you think is the most important research question in your field?

What I especially like about my field is that, at the heart of it, the main research question has been the same for hundreds of years, and will continue to be: how do we keep secrets safe? I believe that this main question is as important as ever, when technology evolves at record speeds and more private information is available than ever before. How do we ensure that all the data that is collected about us cannot be exploited?

Explaining our work can be a challenge. Do you have an analogy or metaphor to help others understand your work?

My particular niche of cryptography is called fully homomorphic encryption, FHE for short, which is a type of encryption that allows you to work on data even when it’s encrypted, which seems like a contradiction: how can something be kept secret, yet still be worked on? Ona analogy I like is this: suppose you have a very valuable necklace that needs fixing, but the only repairer is not to be trusted. How do you get a person to work on your necklace without stealing it? One solution is locking the necklace (and the tools) inside a strongbox with a window and some gloves leading into the box. Then, the repairer can put their hands into the gloves, and work on the necklace inside the box, but cannot access the necklace directly, and therefore cannot steal it. In FHE, the data to be analysed is the valuable necklace, and the strongbox with a window and gloves is the encryption that denies access to the data, but still makes it possible to do meaningful work on it.

What advice would you give students or aspiring scientists looking to pursue a career in your field or ICT research more broadly?

I would advise any aspiring scientist to follow their curiosity and find something that they think is interesting and want to learn more about and understand better, because 1) I think this is the start of any good research project and 2) everyone gets frustrated with research and science from time to time, and then it’s much easier to work through that frustration when you’re driven by curiosity and interest. Finally, I would advise to work with people who respect you, and who you’re comfortable asking questions, even if you feel slightly stupid doing so. These aspects are fundamental for good collaborations, and science is very much a team effort.

See also 

Martha Hovd defended her PhD thesis. 

Interview with Martha Hovd (and others) for International Women’s Day 2023.