Boaz Barak (בועז ברק, born 1974) is an Israeli-American professor of computer science at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

Early life and education

He graduated in 1999 with a B.Sc. in mathematics and computer science from

Tel Aviv University Tel Aviv University (TAU) ( he, אוּנִיבֶרְסִיטַת תֵּל אָבִיב, ''Universitat Tel Aviv'') is a public research university in Tel Aviv, Israel. With over 30,000 students, it is the largest university in the country. Locate ...

. In 2004, he received his Ph.D. from the

Weizmann Institute of Science The Weizmann Institute of Science ( he, מכון ויצמן למדע ''Machon Vaitzman LeMada'') is a public research university in Rehovot, Israel, established in 1934, 14 years before the State of Israel. It differs from other Israeli unive ...

with thesis ''Non-Black-Box Techniques in Cryptography'' under the supervision of

Oded Goldreich Oded Goldreich ( he, עודד גולדרייך; b. 1957) is a professor of Computer Science at the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science of Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel. His research interests lie within the theory of computation ...

. Barak was at the

Institute for Advanced Study The Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), located in Princeton, New Jersey, in the United States, is an independent center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. It has served as the academic home of internationally preeminent schola ...

for two years from 2003 to 2005. He was an assistant professor in the computer science department of

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...

from 2005 to 2010 and an associate professor from 2010 to 2011. From 2010 to 2016, he was a researcher at Microsoft's New England research laboratory. Since 2016, he is the Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science in the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. He is a citizen of both

Israel Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...

and the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

Career

He co-authored, with

Sanjeev Arora Sanjeev Arora (born January 1968) is an Indian American theoretical computer scientist. Life He was a visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study in 2002–03. In 2008 he was inducted as a Fellow of the Association for Computing Mac ...

, ''Computational Complexity: A Modern Approach'', published by Cambridge University Press in 2009. Barak also wrote extensive notes with David Steurer on the sum of squares algorithm and occasionally blogs on the ''Windows on Theory'' blog. In 2013, he, Robert J. Goldston, and Alexander Glaser worked to design a "zero-knowledge" system to verify that warheads designated for disarmament are actually what they purport to be. By directing high-energy neutrons into the warhead under investigation, and comparing the distribution passing through to the distribution that passed through a known warhead, inspectors can determine whether a warhead being disarmed is genuine or a ruse designed to evade treaty requirements, without leaking nuclear secrets. For this work, he was selected for '' Foreign Policys Top 100 Global Thinkers issue for 2014. In 2014 Barak was an invited speaker at the

International Congress of Mathematics The International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) is the largest conference for the topic of mathematics. It meets once every four years, hosted by the International Mathematical Union (IMU). The Fields Medals, the Nevanlinna Prize (to be rename ...

Seoul Seoul (; ; ), officially known as the Seoul Special City, is the capital and largest metropolis of South Korea.Before 1972, Seoul was the ''de jure'' capital of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) as stated iArticle 103 of ...

. With

Mark Braverman Mark Braverman (born 1948) is an American psychologist and activist for Palestinian rights. He is the executive director of Kairos USA, a pro-Palestinian group for American Christians. Early life and education Braverman was born in 1948 to a Con ...

Xi Chen Xi Chen (Chinese: 陈汐) is a computer scientist. He is an associate professor of computer science at Columbia University. Chen won the 2021 Gödel Prize and Fulkerson Prize for his co-authored paper "Complexity of Counting CSP with Complex Weigh ...

, and Anup Rao, he won the 2016

SIAM Thailand ( ), historically known as Siam () and officially the Kingdom of Thailand, is a country in Southeast Asia, located at the centre of the Indochinese Peninsula, spanning , with a population of almost 70 million. The country is bo ...

Outstanding Paper Prize for the paper “How to Compress Interactive Communication”. He was named to the 2022 class of

ACM Fellow ACM or A.C.M. may refer to: Aviation * AGM-129 ACM, 1990–2012 USAF cruise missile * Air chief marshal * Air combat manoeuvring or dogfighting * Air cycle machine * Arica Airport (Colombia) (IATA: ACM), in Arica, Amazonas, Colombia Computing * ...

s, "for contributions to theoretical computer science, in particular cryptography and computational complexity, and service to the theory community".

Patents

* U.S. Patent 7,003,677, “Method for operating proactively secured applications on an insecure system” with Amir Herzberg, Dalit Naor and Eldad Shai of IBM Haifa Research Lab. Filed November 1999, granted February 2006.

References

External links

* * * * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Barak, Boaz Israeli computer scientists American computer scientists 1974 births Living people Tel Aviv University alumni Weizmann Institute of Science alumni Princeton University faculty John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences faculty 20th-century American mathematicians Israeli mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians Theoretical computer scientists Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery