Shafrira Goldwasser (Hebrew:שפרירה גולדווסר; born 1959^[5]) is an Israeli-American computer scientist. A winner of theTuring Award in 2012, she is the RSA Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at theMassachusetts Institute of Technology;^[6] a professor of mathematical sciences at theWeizmann Institute of Science; the former director of theSimons Institute for the Theory of Computing at theUniversity of California, Berkeley; and co-founder and chief scientist of Duality Technologies.^{[7][8][9][10][11]}

Shafi Goldwasser
שפרירה גולדווסר‎
Goldwasser in 2010
Born	Shafrira Goldwasser 1959 (age 65–66) New York City, United States
Citizenship	Israel United States
Alma mater	Carnegie Mellon University University of California, Berkeley
Known for	Zero-knowledge proof Probabilistic encryption Blum–Goldwasser cryptosystem Goldwasser–Micali cryptosystem[4]
Spouse	Nir Shavit
Children	2
Awards	Grace Murray Hopper Award (1996) Gödel Prize (1993, 2001) Member of the National Academy of Sciences (2004) IEEE Emanuel R. Piore Award (2011) BBVA Award (2018) RSA Mathematics Award (1998) Loreal Unesco Women in Science Award (2021) Turing Award (2012)[1] Suffrage Science award (2016)[2] ACM Fellow (2017) AAAS Fellow (2000)
Scientific career
Fields	Computer science,cryptography
Institutions	Massachusetts Institute of Technology Weizmann Institute Simons Institute,Berkeley
Thesis	Probabilistic Encryption: Theory and Applications (1984)
Doctoral advisor	Manuel Blum[3]
Doctoral students	Elette Boyle Johan Håstad Yael Tauman Kalai Tal Malkin Amit Sahai Salil Vadhan[3] Vinod Vaikuntanathan
Website	people.csail.mit.edu/shafi

Born in New York City, Goldwasser obtained her bachelor's degree in 1979 in mathematics and science fromCarnegie Mellon. She continued her studies in computer science atBerkeley, receiving a master's degree in 1981 and a PhD in 1984. While at Berkeley, she and her doctoral advisor,Manuel Blum, would propose theBlum-Goldwasser cryptosystem.^[3]

Goldwasser joinedMIT in 1983, and in 1997 became the first holder of the RSA Professorship. She became a professor at theWeizmann Institute of Science, concurrent to her professorship at MIT, in 1993. She is a member of thetheory of computation group atMIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.^[12] In 2005, Goldwasser was elected a member of theNational Academy of Engineering for contributions to cryptography, number theory, and complexity theory, and their applications to privacy and security,^[13] and in 2006,Berkeley awarded her its Computer Science Distinguished Alumni Award.

Goldwasser was a co-recipient of the 2012Turing Award for "revolutionizing the science of cryptography".^[14]

Since November 2016, Goldwasser has been the chief scientist and co-founder of Duality Technologies, a US-based start-up which offers secure data analytics using advanced cryptographic techniques.^[15] She is also a scientific advisor for several technology startups in the security area, including QED-it, specializing in the Zero Knowledge Blockchain, andAlgorand, a pure proof-of-stakeblockchain.^[16]

On January 1, 2018, she became the director of Berkeley'sSimons Institute for the Theory of Computing, a position she held until August 2024.^[17]

Goldwasser's research areas includecomputational complexity theory,cryptography andcomputational number theory. She is the co-inventor ofprobabilistic encryption,^[18] which set up and achieved the gold standard for security for data encryption.

Goldwasser is a co-inventor ofzero-knowledge proofs, which probabilistically and interactively demonstrate the validity of an assertion without conveying any additional knowledge, and are a key tool in the design ofcryptographic protocols. Her work in complexity theory includes the classification of approximation problems, showing that some problems inNP remain hard even when only an approximate solution is needed,^[19] and pioneering methods for delegating computations to untrusted servers.^[20] Her work in number theory includes the invention with Joe Kilian of primality proving using elliptic curves.^[21] Goldwasser is also a lead onProject CETI, an interdisciplinary initiative for translating the communication of sperm whales.^[22]

Goldwasser was awarded the 2012Turing Award along withSilvio Micali for their work in the field of cryptography.^[23]

Goldwasser has twice won theGödel Prize intheoretical computer science: first in 1993 (for"The knowledge complexity of interactive proof systems"),^[24] and again in 2001 (forInteractive Proofs and the Hardness of Approximating Cliques).^[25] Other awards include theACM Grace Murray Hopper Award (1996) for outstanding young computer professional of the year and theRSA Award for Excellence in Mathematics (1998) for outstanding mathematical contributions to cryptography. In 2001 she was elected to theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 2002 she gave a plenary lecture at the International Congress of Mathematicians in Beijing.^[26] In 2004 she was elected to theNational Academy of Sciences, and in 2005 to theNational Academy of Engineering. She was selected as anIACR Fellow in 2007. Goldwasser received the 2008–2009 Athena Lecturer Award of the Association for Computing Machinery's Committee on Women in Computing.^[27] She is the recipient ofThe Franklin Institute's2010 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science.^[28] She received theIEEE Emanuel R. Piore Award in 2011.^[29]She received the 2018 Frontier of Knowledge award together with Micali, Rivest and Shamir.^[30]

Goldwasser was elected as anACM Fellow in 2017.^[31] In July 2017, she was a plenary lecturer in the Mathematical Congress of the Americas.^[32]

In 2018, Goldwasser was awarded an honorary degree by her alma mater,Carnegie Mellon University.^[33] In June 2019 Goldwasser was awarded an honorary doctorate of science by theUniversity of Oxford.^[34]

Goldwasser is featured in the Notable Women in Computing cards.^[35] She won theSuffrage Science award in 2016.^[2] She was on the Mathematical Sciences jury for theInfosys Prize in 2020.^[36] She was awarded the 2021L’Oréal-UNESCO for Women in Science Award in Computer Science.^[37]

Goldwasser is married to fellow computer scientistNir Shavit, with whom she has two sons.^[38][5]