I was reading about the passing of Alexander Grothendieck, and something caught my interest:



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> Mr. Grothendieck was able to answer concrete questions about these relationships by finding universal mathematical principles that could shed unexpected light on them. Applications of his work are evident in fields as diverse as genetics, cryptography and robotics. [New York Times](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/16/world/europe/alexander-grothendieck-math-enigma-dies-at-86.html?_r=0)
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After extensive googling, I haven't been able to find examples. **Has Grothendieck's mathematical work been applied to robotics, cryptography, or genetics, and if so, how?** 



Robotics, Cryptography, and Genetics applications of Grothendieck's work?
Here is a guess: first, "Grothendieck's work" is being interpreted as "algebraic geometry," so the real question is what applications of algebraic geometry there are in genetics, cryptography, and robotics.


* Genetics: my guess is that this is a reference to the use of [algebraic statistics](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algebraic_statistics#Recent_work_using_commutative_algebra_and_algebraic_geometry) to understand phylogenetics. See, for example, [this news article](https://www.siam.org/pdf/news/1146.pdf), [this survey](http://arxiv.org/abs/math/0407033), or [this textbook](http://math.berkeley.edu/~bernd/owl.pdf).
* Cryptography: my guess is that this is a reference to the use of elliptic curves in cryptography as well as perhaps to the use of algebraic curves to produce error-correcting codes. See, for example, [this textbook](http://press.princeton.edu/titles/9103.html).
* Robotics: my guess is that this is a reference to the use of algebraic geometry to understand robot [motion planning](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_planning). See, for example, [this paper](http://www-math.mit.edu/phase2/UJM/vol1/GRAYSO~2.PDF).


However, as far as I can tell, *Grothendieck*'s work in particular is not relevant to any of this. 


