Silvio Micali | |
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| Born | (1954-10-13)October 13, 1954 (age 70) |
| Nationality | Italian |
| Alma mater | La Sapienza University of Rome UC Berkeley (PhD) |
| Known for | Blum–Micali algorithm Goldwasser–Micali cryptosystem GMR algorithm Zero-knowledge proof[1] Claw-free permutation Pseudorandom Functions Peppercoin Algorand Semantic security Verifiable secret sharing |
| Awards |
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| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Computer Science Cryptography |
| Institutions | University of Toronto University of Pennsylvania Tsinghua University MIT CS & AI Lab |
| Thesis | Randomness versus Hardness (1983) |
| Doctoral advisor | Manuel Blum[2] |
| Doctoral students | |
| Website | people |
Silvio Micali (born October 13, 1954) is anItaliancomputer scientist,professor at theMassachusetts Institute of Technology and the founder ofAlgorand, a proof-of-stake blockchain cryptocurrency protocol. Micali's research at theMIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory centers oncryptography andinformation security.[4][5]
In 2012, he received theTuring Award for his work in cryptography.[6][1]
Micali graduated in mathematics atLa Sapienza University of Rome in 1978 and earned aPhD degree in computer science from theUniversity of California, Berkeley in 1982;[7] for research supervised byManuel Blum.[2] Micali has been on the faculty ofMIT's Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department since 1983. He has also served on the faculty of theUniversity of Pennsylvania,University of Toronto, andTsinghua University.[8] His research interests are cryptography, zero knowledge, pseudorandom generation, secure protocols, and mechanism design.
Micali is best known for some of his fundamental early work onpublic-key cryptosystems,pseudorandom functions,digital signatures,oblivious transfer,secure multiparty computation, and is one of the co-inventors ofzero-knowledge proofs.[9] His former doctoral students includeMihir Bellare,Bonnie Berger,Shai Halevi,Rafail Ostrovsky, andPhillip Rogaway.[2][3]
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.[10]
In the early 2000s, Micali also foundedPeppercoin, a micropayments system which was acquired in 2007. In 2017, he foundedAlgorand.[11]
Micali won theGödel Prize in 1993.[12] He received theRSA Award for Excellence in Mathematics in 2004.[13] In 2007, he was selected to be a member of theNational Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of theInternational Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR). He is also a member of theNational Academy of Engineering and theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences.[14] He received theTuring Award[1] for the year 2012 along withShafi Goldwasser for their work in the field of cryptography.[15]In 2015 theUniversity of Salerno acknowledged his studies by giving him an honoris causa degree in Computer Science.He was elected as anACM Fellow in 2017.[16]
