Silvio Micali (born October 13, 1954) is an

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional Ita ...

computer scientist A computer scientist is a person who is trained in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation, as opposed to the hardware side on which computer engineers mainly focus (al ...

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who pr ...

at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

and the founder of

Algorand Algorand is a proof-of-stake blockchain cryptocurrency protocol. Algorand's native cryptocurrency is called ALGO. History Algorand was founded in 2017 by Silvio Micali, a professor at MIT. Algorand is composed of a company and a foundation. ...

. Micali's research centers 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 ...

and

information security Information security, sometimes shortened to InfoSec, is the practice of protecting information by mitigating information risks. It is part of information risk management. It typically involves preventing or reducing the probability of unauthorize ...

. In 2012, he received the

Turing Award The ACM A. M. Turing Award is an annual prize given by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) for contributions of lasting and major technical importance to computer science. It is generally recognized as the highest distinction in compu ...

for his work in cryptography.

Personal life

Micali graduated in mathematics at

La Sapienza University of Rome The Sapienza University of Rome ( it, Sapienza – Università di Roma), also called simply Sapienza or the University of Rome, and formally the Università degli Studi di Roma "La Sapienza", is a public research university located in Rome, Ita ...

in 1978 and earned a PhD degree in computer science from the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

in 1982; for research supervised by

Manuel Blum Manuel Blum (born 26 April 1938) is a Venezuelan-American computer scientist who received the Turing Award in 1995 "In recognition of his contributions to the foundations of computational complexity theory and its application to cryptography and ...

. Micali has been on the faculty at

MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...

, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department, since 1983. His research interests are cryptography, zero knowledge, pseudorandom generation, secure protocols, and mechanism design.

Career

Micali is best known for some of his fundamental early work on

public-key cryptosystem Public-key cryptography, or asymmetric cryptography, is the field of cryptographic systems that use pairs of related keys. Each key pair consists of a public key and a corresponding private key. Key pairs are generated with cryptographic alg ...

pseudorandom function In cryptography, a pseudorandom function family, abbreviated PRF, is a collection of efficiently-computable functions which emulate a random oracle in the following way: no efficient algorithm can distinguish (with significant advantage) betwee ...

digital signature A digital signature is a mathematical scheme for verifying the authenticity of digital messages or documents. A valid digital signature, where the prerequisites are satisfied, gives a recipient very high confidence that the message was created b ...

s, oblivious transfer,

secure multiparty computation Secure multi-party computation (also known as secure computation, multi-party computation (MPC) or privacy-preserving computation) is a subfield of cryptography with the goal of creating methods for parties to jointly compute a function over their ...

, and is one of the co-inventors of

zero-knowledge proof In cryptography, a zero-knowledge proof or zero-knowledge protocol is a method by which one party (the prover) can prove to another party (the verifier) that a given statement is true while the prover avoids conveying any additional information a ...

s. His former doctoral students include

Mihir Bellare Mihir Bellare is a cryptographer and professor at the University of California San Diego. He has published several seminal papers in the field of cryptography (notably in the area of provable security), many of which were co-written with Phillip R ...

, Bonnie Berger,

Shai Halevi Shai Halevi ( he, שי הלוי; born 1966) is a computer scientist who works on cryptography research at Algorand Foundation, a blockchain startup founded by Silvio Micali. Born in Israel in 1966, Halevi received a B.A. and M.Sc. in computer sc ...

Rafail Ostrovsky Rafail Ostrovsky is a distinguished professor of computer science and mathematics at UCLA and a well-known researcher in algorithms and cryptography. Biography Rafail Ostrovsky received his Ph.D. from MIT in 1992. He is a member of the editoria ...

, Rafael Pass, Chris Peikert, and

Phillip Rogaway Phillip Rogaway is a professor of computer science at the University of California, Davis. He graduated from Beverly Hills High School, and later earned a BA in computer science from UC Berkeley and completed his PhD in cryptography at MIT, in t ...

. In 2001 Micali co-founded CoreStreet Ltd, a software company originally based in Cambridge, Massachusetts which implemented Micali's patents involving checking the status of digital certificates (mainly applicable to large enterprise and government-sized digital and physical identity projects). Micali served as Chief Scientist at CoreStreet. CoreStreet was bought by ActivIdentity in 2009. In the early 2000's Micali also founded

Peppercoin Peppercoin is a cryptography, cryptographic system for processing micropayments. Peppercoin Inc. was a company that offers services based on the peppercoin method. The peppercoin system was developed by Silvio Micali and Ron Rivest and first presen ...

, a micro-payments system which was acquired in 2007. In 2017, Micali founded

Awards and honors

Micali won the

Gödel Prize The Gödel Prize is an annual prize for outstanding papers in the area of theoretical computer science, given jointly by the European Association for Theoretical Computer Science (EATCS) and the Association for Computing Machinery Special Interes ...

in 1993. He received the

RSA Award for Excellence in Mathematics RSA may refer to: Organizations Academia and education * Rabbinical Seminary of America, a yeshiva in New York City *Regional Science Association International (formerly the Regional Science Association), a US-based learned society *Renaissance S ...

in 2004. In 2007, he was selected to be a member of the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...

and a Fellow 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 ...

(IACR). He is also a member of the

National Academy of Engineering The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Engineering is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy ...

and the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and ...

. He received the

for the year 2012 along with

Shafi Goldwasser en, Shafrira Goldwasser , name = Shafi Goldwasser , image = Shafi Goldwasser.JPG , caption = Shafi Goldwasser in 2010 , birth_place = New York City, New York, U.S. , birth_date = , death_date ...

for their work in the field of cryptography. In 2015 the University of Salerno acknowledged his studies by giving him an honoris causa degree in Computer Science. He was elected as an

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 * ...

in 2017.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Micali, Silvio 1954 births Living people Theoretical computer scientists Italian computer scientists American computer scientists American people of Italian descent Modern cryptographers Gödel Prize laureates MIT School of Engineering faculty UC Berkeley College of Engineering alumni Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery Turing Award laureates International Association for Cryptologic Research fellows People associated with cryptocurrency Scientists from Sicily