Microsoft Research India (MRI) is organising a three-week summer school here for tech graduates and researchers on cryptography, algorithms and security.

To be held from May 22 to June 10 in partnership with the mathematics department of the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) at the IISc campus, the school will focus on the critical areas not available in textbooks or covered in the academic syllabus.

"We have selected about 80 graduates and undegraduates from IITs and IIITs (Indian Institutes of Information Technology) and scientists/techocrats from R&D and defence institutes for the summer school, which is the first of its kind being held in India," MRI director P. Anandan told reporters here Thursday.

The school will consist of lectures by international experts in fields such as cryptography, algorithms, security, multimedia, protection, authentication and identification, auctions, game theory, number theory and elliptic curves.

Sponsored by the Indo-US Science and Technology Forum, the school will help the participants to interact with leading faculty members and network with global research community.

Among the experts who will be lecturing at the school are Bela Bollobas from Cambridge University, Dan Boneh from Stanford University, Ravi Kannan from Yale University, Adi Shamir and Eran Tromer from Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel, and Kamal Jain, David Jao and Kivanc Mihcak from Microsoft Research, the US.

"MRI partners with academics and institutions in the subcontinent to advance the state-of-the-art in computer science education and research. A number of programmes are underway to support basic research of local academia and foster alliances with universities in India," Anandan said.

According to IISc mathematics department chairman G. Rangarajan, since mathematics and its applications constitute a significant amount of research, an IISc mathematics initiative has been set up to foster inter-disciplinary collaborations between faculty members of the institute, with maths as the common theme.

"Such collaborations are aimed at helping scientists and engineers to solve complex research problems requiring inputs from mathematicians and help them to extend their expertise to applied areas," Rangarajan said.