How do we know if a stranger eavesdrops on our texts? Can we be certain that an online form with private information intended for a bank or doctor’s office doesn’t fall into the wrong hands? Dakshita Khurana studies how to keep digital secrets safe, a form of cryptography. She works as an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, south of Chicago. She solves these cryptography problems using the unique properties of quantum mechanics—the workings and mathematics of sub-atomic particles.
Today’s computers, referred to as classical computers, store information as either a one or a
