The autumn school IACR-SEAMS School “Cryptography: Foundations and New Directions” is the first joint school between The International Association of Cryptology Research IACR and The South East Asia Mathematical Society (SEAMS) organized by Vietnam Institute for Advanced Study in Mathematics (VIASM) and University of Science – Vietnam National University Hanoi (VNU-HUS).

The school was held at VIASM from November 27 to December 04 with series of lectures from basic to advanced, from theoretial to practical, taught by leading experts in the field. The school has ranked number one among all proposals to IACR school this year. In addition, the school was obtained support from CIMPA (The International Center of Pure and Applied Mathematics), SEAMS, IMU (The International Mathematical Union), VIASM and VNU-HUS.

In particular, there is a public lecture by Adi Shamir, one of the founders and contributors for the development of modern cryptography. With important founding results, Adi Shamir has obtained many prizes, specially the Turing Prize – the highest prize in Computer Science. Therefore, the school attracted 251 applicants from all over the world. After two rounds of selection, 71 applicants were accepted in which 33 participants were fully supported for their travels, hotel and food during the school. All other participants were also covered lunch during the school. The school is an important event which both creates a professional academical environment and introduces new research directions which are highly practical and potential for Vietnam in near future. This offers Vietnamese participants a great opportunity to study and discuss with leading experts and other international participants. We hope that this will be a wonderful starting point for the development of cryptography and information security in Vietnam in the future.