My professors at Brown were walking on QR lattice cryptography well before 1997, although they may not have been publishing much - NTRU was in active development throughout the mid 1990s when I was there. Heating up by 1997 though, for sure.
Yes, I think Silverman and Pipher worked together on NTRU together. I went through and helped develop a tiny bit of the undergrad crypto curriculum there, but I wasn’t what you’d call social with the department, so this may be inaccurate :)
