Silvio Micali (born October 13, 1954) is an Italian

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 (a ...

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

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 th ...

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. Th ...

. 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 adv ...

and

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

. 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 in 1978 and earned a

PhD PHD or PhD may refer to: * Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), an academic qualification Entertainment * '' PhD: Phantasy Degree'', a Korean comic series * '' Piled Higher and Deeper'', a web comic * Ph.D. (band), a 1980s British group ** Ph.D. (Ph.D. al ...

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 un ...

in 1982; for research supervised by Manuel Blum. Micali has been on the faculty at MIT, 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 cryptosystems,

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) between ...

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, and is one of the co-inventors of zero-knowledge proofs. His former doctoral students include Mihir Bellare, Bonnie Berger, Shai Halevi, Rafail Ostrovsky, Rafael Pass, Chris Peikert, and Phillip Rogaway. 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, a micro-payments system which was acquired in 2007. In 2017, Micali founded

Awards and honors

Micali won the Gödel Prize 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 Nat ...

and a Fellow of the International Association for Cryptologic Research (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 of ...

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, a ...

. He received the

for the year 2012 along with Shafi Goldwasser 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 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