'Progressing in the unknown': Concordia's 3 new Vanier scholars

“Encryption is present in everything we do, from your phone to online banking,” says Carnavalet, who’s originally from Nice, France. “In security, there are two aspects: the defenders and the attackers. The attackers, if I may quote Star Wars, are the ‘dark side of the Force.’”

Carnavalet’s winning project for the Vanier scholarship is about shutting out the attackers and protecting computer memory.

“Computers operate on data and store temporary information in the system's main memory (the RAM). Whoever accesses the content of that memory can extract valuable ‘secrets,’ such as passwords and encryption keys,” says Carnavalet, who is part of the The Madiba Security Research Group at Concordia.

“A motivated adversary who targets a specific high-value user or organization is able to seize these secret keys from a computer's memory and reveal sensitive contents.”

So, what does he propose? “I would like to leverage the latest technologies offered in today’s computers, as part of the Trusted Computing Group technology, which are not currently studied for this specific purpose, to propose a novel way of protecting data in memory.”

The Vanier scholarship will allow Carnavalet to continue his research by providing financial independence.

“I’m still progressing in the unknown,” he says. “That’s what research is.”

Ilona Jurkonytė: spotlight on Lithuanian film

Growing up in Lithuania, Vanier scholarship winner Ilona Jurkonytė lived through the socio-political transition from Soviet state to independent nation. Now, she plans to focus her research on Lithuanian cinema, which has received little scholarly attention.

“Undergraduate math students often spend their time receiving polished definitions, theorems and proofs that were carefully developed over the last hundreds of years, or memorizing how to perform a series of algorithms by hand. They only rarely use the computer as anything beyond a big calculator,” says Broley.

“Many mathematicians in academia and industry, on the other hand, use computer programming in powerful ways to undertake many different types of tasks. By exploring this gap and the possible ways of bridging it, my research may provide insight into the development of more relevant, dynamic and engaging undergraduate math curricula in Canada.”

Broley wants to investigate how math students could and should be engaging in computer programming to aid in their understanding of mathematics. She wants to know: does it make them better mathematicians? If so, let’s put it into practice.

“There’s growing interest in starting to teach students coding in younger school grades, as they do in England,” says Broley. “It makes sense. Now, university professors often have to teach their students coding from scratch. If students were exposed to it earlier, it would become much more natural for them. And by the time they’d get to university, they’d be able to push their learning so much further!”

The Vanier scholarship will enable Broley to focus on her work, as well as travel to conduct research with undergraduate students across Canada. It will allow her to attend two international math education conferences in Europe. Once there, she hopes to network with like-minded researchers and compare outcomes.

Learn more about research at Concordia.

Find out how to apply for a Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship.