sica-lrg

Dr. Francesco Sica

Assistant Professor, Department of Mathematics and Statistics

Science Building (SE-43), Room #270

sicaf@fau.edu

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Education

  • Ph.D. in Mathematics, McGill University, Canada, 1998
  • M.Sc. in Mathematics, Scuola Normale Superiore, Italy, 1993
  • B.Sc. in Mathematics, University of Pisa, Italy, 1993

Research Interests

  • Public-key cryptography
  • Mathematical cryptology 
  • Number Theory

Research Description

After a PhD in analytic number theory, I joined a crypto lab at the National University of Singapore and then a crypto group at the Université catholique de Louvain in Belgium where I worked on the NESSIE project to provide a scientific evaluation of cryptographic primitives in view of their future use in European standards.

My research interests have centered around elliptic curve cryptography, mostly in implementation issues, but recently also in their security (isogeny problem with torsion). I have also published on the use of elliptic curves in pseudorandom number generation, and in multistorage solutions on elliptic curves.

I am also working on integer factorization and am more generally interested in computational problems with a strong number theoretical flavor.

Recent Publications

  • N. H. Le and F. Sica, Optimal Bucket Set Construction for Multi-scalar Multiplication with Endomorphisms, to appear in Asiacrypt (2026).
  • A. Dutta, V. Kuchta and F. Sica, A New Multiscalar Multiplication Method Resistant to Timing Attacks, CT-RSAC, LNCS 16496, 181-197 (2026).
  • W. Xiong, A. Rahaei, S. Shin, X. Fan, T. Suh, V. Kuchta, F. Sica, W. Shi and L. Xu, Secure MSM Outsourcing Computation for Zero-knowledge Proof Generation , Financial Cryptography, LNCS 16562 (2026).
  • F. Sica, Subexponential computation of truncated theta series, Annals of Communications in Mathematics, 8(3), 425-430 (2025).
  • F. Sica, A Proof of the Dimension Theorem for Vector Spaces, Annals of Communications in Mathematics, 8(2), 299-302 (2025).
  • X. Fan, V. Kuchta, F. Sica, L. Xu, Speeding Up Multi-Scalar Multiplications for Pairing-Based zkSNARKs, Journal of Cryptology 38(2), 21 (2025). 
  • R. Karanjai, S. Shin, W. Xiong, X. Fan, L. Chen, T. Zhang, T. Suh, W. Shi, V. Kuchta, F. Sica and L. Xu, TPU as Cryptographic Accelerator, International Workshop on Hardware and Architectural Support for Security and Privacy, HASP 2024, Austin, TX, USA, 2 November 2024.
  • F. Sica, Two Remarks on Torsion-Point Attacks in Isogeny-Based Cryptography, Mathematical Cryptology 4(1), 1-10 (2024).