Shai Halevi ( he, שי הלוי; born 1966) is a computer scientist who works on

cryptography Cryptography, or cryptology (from grc, , translit=kryptós "hidden, secret"; and ''graphein'', "to write", or ''-logia'', "study", respectively), is the practice and study of techniques for secure communication in the presence of adver ...

research at Algorand Foundation, a blockchain startup founded by

Silvio Micali Silvio Micali (born October 13, 1954) is an Italian computer scientist, professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the founder of Algorand. Micali's research centers on cryptography and information security. In 2012, he received ...

. Born in

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 ...

in 1966, Halevi received a B.A. and M.Sc. in computer science from the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology in 1991 and 1993. He received his Ph.D. in computer science from MIT in 1997, and then joined IBM's

Thomas J. Watson Research Center The Thomas J. Watson Research Center is the headquarters for IBM Research. The center comprises three sites, with its main laboratory in Yorktown Heights, New York, U.S., 38 miles (61 km) north of New York City, Albany, New York and wit ...

, where he was a principal research staff member until 2019. Since 2019, he has been a research fellow at Algorand Foundation.

Research

Shai Halevi's research interests are in cryptography and security. He has published numerous original technical research papers, three of which were awarded the IBM Pat Goldberg memorial best-paper award (in 2004, 2012, and 2013). Notable contributions by Shai Halevi include: * Obfuscation. Halevi is a co-inventor of the first candidate general-purpose

indistinguishability obfuscation In cryptography, indistinguishability obfuscation (abbreviated IO or iO) is a type of software obfuscation with the defining property that obfuscating any two programs that compute the same mathematical function results in programs that cannot b ...

schemes, with security based on a mathematical conjecture. This development generated much interest in the cryptography community and was called "a watershed moment for cryptography." * Cryptographic Multilinear Maps. Halevi is a co-inventor of Cryptographic Multilinear Maps (which constitute the main technical tool behind cryptographic obfuscation and many other applications), solving a long-standing open problemSanjam Garg, Craig Gentry, and Shai Halevi
Candidate Multilinear Maps from Ideal Lattices
In ''EUROCRYPT 2013'' (Springer) * Homomorphic Encryption. Halevi is one of the leading researchers on

homomorphic encryption Homomorphic encryption is a form of encryption that permits users to perform computations on its encrypted data without first decrypting it. These resulting computations are left in an encrypted form which, when decrypted, result in an identical ...

. He authored many articles,M. van Dijk, C. Gentry, S. Halevi, and V. Vaikuntanathan
Fully Homomorphic Encryption over the Integers
In ''EUROCRYPT 2010'' (Springer) C. Gentry and S. Halevi
Implementing Gentry's fully-homomorphic encryption scheme
In ''EUROCRYPT 2011'' (Springer) C. Gentry and S. Halevi
Fully Homomorphic Encryption without Squashing Using Depth-3 Arithmetic Circuits
In ''FOCS 2011'' (IEEE) C. Gentry, S. Halevi, and N. P. Smart
Fully Homomorphic Encryption with Polylog Overhead
In ''EUROCRYPT 2012'' (Springer) C. Gentry, S. Halevi, and N. P. Smart
Better Bootstrapping in Fully Homomorphic Encryption
In ''PKC 2012'' (Springer) C. Gentry, S. Halevi, and N. P. Smart
Homomorphic Evaluation of the AES Circuit
In ''CRYPTO 2012'' (Springer) gave invited lectures and tutorials on the topic,Fully Homomorphic Encryption
Tutorial in the Winter School on Secure Computation and Efficiency, Bar-Ilan University, 2011.Fully Homomorphic Encryption
Tutorial in CRYPTO 2011, UC Santa-BarbaraFully Homomorphic Encryption
Invited lecture at the UCI Workshop on Lattices with Symmetry and he is also the principal developer (together with

Victor Shoup Victor Shoup is a computer scientist and mathematician. He obtained a PhD in computer science from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1989, and he did his undergraduate work at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. He is a professor at ...

) of the HElib homormophic-encryption software library. S. Halevi and V. Shoup
Algorithms in HElib
In ''CRYPTO 2014'' S. Halevi and V. Shoup
Bootstrapping for HElib
In ''Cryptology ePrint Archive'' * The Random Oracle Model. Halevi co-authored the influential work that pointed out for the first time the existence of "structurally flawed" cryptosystems that nonetheless have a proof of security in the random-oracle model. Since 2013 Halevi is the chair of the steering committee of the Theory of Cryptography Conference. He served on the board of directors of the

International Association for Cryptologic Research International is an adjective (also used as a noun) meaning "between nations". International may also refer to: Music Albums * ''International'' (Kevin Michael album), 2011 * ''International'' (New Order album), 2002 * ''International'' (The T ...

. He chaired the CRYPTO conference in 2009 and co-chaired the TCC conference in 2006. Halevi also gave many invited talks, including in the USENIX Security Symposium in 2008 and the PKC conference in 2014.

Software

Halevi maintains two open-source software projects: The HElib homomorphic-encryption library, and a web-system for submission/review of articles to academic conferences

References

External links

Shai Halevi's Home Page

The Cryptography Research Group at the IBM T.J.Watson Research Center
{{DEFAULTSORT:Halevi, Shai Israeli computer scientists Theoretical computer scientists Modern cryptographers Public-key cryptographers Living people Israeli cryptographers 1966 births MIT School of Engineering alumni Technion – Israel Institute of Technology alumni IBM employees