For the past two years Mark Stamp has been employed as a cryptologic mathematician by the National Security Agency (NSA) at Fort Meade, Maryland. The primary function of NSA is to protect U.S. communications and to produce foreign intelligence information. NSA is probably the largest employer of mathematicians in this country. Since arriving at NSA Mark has been in the Crypto-Mathematician Program (CMP). The CMP is a three-year program where participants take a series of six-month "tours" in various offices around the agency and also take several classes where useful techniques and algorithms are introduced. At the end of three years, Mark will be free to choose the office where he wants to go permanently. And even after selecting a "permanent" office, it is fairly easy to move to other offices, either temporarily or permanently.
Mark's education includes a B.S. degree (with majors in computer science and history) from Morningside College and a Ph.D. in mathematics from Texas Tech University. In graduate school he was supported by a grant from NSA for two years and he also worked on problems in information theory, linear control theory and epidemiology. From this background he had some basic knowledge of cryptology, and that has been moderately useful at NSA. However, far more useful was his work in epidemiology, since that work required close collaboration with medical doctors and other non-mathematicians. At NSA he often works with people who have a wide variety of technical backgrounds and diverse areas of expertise.
When Mark entered the job market after completing his Ph.D. in 1992, he spent several anxious months wondering if he would get any offers at all. After applying for hundreds of positions - and receiving hundreds of rejections - he was very fortunate to obtain two academic offers and an interview with NSA. Since an extensive background investigation is required by NSA, and no offer could be made until that process was completed, he had to choose between the other two offers; a one year visiting position at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), and an offer from the University of Aizu in Aizu-Wakamatsu, Japan. Mark says that the Japanese offer was tempting, but the offer from WPI was simply too good to pass up. He enjoyed his year at WPI but job-security and the chance to try something outside the academic realm led him to opt for NSA when an offer finally came through.
He has not been disappointed by the work at NSA. He finds it an interesting and challenging combination of theory and practice, with computers playing a prominent role. Among the mathematical items he has seen at NSA are algebraic coding theory, Berlekamp-Massey algorithm, neural networks, and wavelets. In addition, probability and statistics are ever-present, and there is no shortage of difficult combinatorial problems (his personal favorite). During his two years at NSA he has attended several conferences and he has continued to do some academic research. This past summer he worked at a camp (sponsored, in part, by NSA) for high school students. The course he helped design offered students the opportunity to experience the joys and frustrations of mathematical research. Although the students had limited mathematical backgrounds, most were able to make some progress on genuine research problems.
Mark also enjoys solving and proposing mathematics problems. The problem sections of the American Mathematical Monthly and the SIAM Review are always eagerly awaited. The time spent working on these problems is, in his opinion, time well-spent. Problem solving skills are useful in his work and he believes these skills are sharpened by working on problems. Hopefully, the result is a larger mathematical "bag of tricks" the next time he needs to solve a real-world problem.
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