Boaz Barak (

Hebrew Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...

: בועז ברק, born 1974) is an Israeli-American professor of computer science at

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

Early life and education

He graduated in 1999 with a B.Sc. in mathematics and computer science from

Tel Aviv University Tel Aviv University (TAU) is a Public university, public research university in Tel Aviv, Israel. With over 30,000 students, it is the largest university in the country. Located in northwest Tel Aviv, the university is the center of teaching and ...

. In 2004, he received his Ph.D. from the

Weizmann Institute of Science The Weizmann Institute of Science ( ''Machon Weizmann LeMada'') is a Public university, public research university in Rehovot, Israel, established in 1934, fourteen years before the State of Israel was founded. Unlike other List of Israeli uni ...

with thesis ''Non-Black-Box Techniques in Cryptography'' under the supervision of

Oded Goldreich Oded Goldreich (; born 1957) is a professor of computer science at the faculty of mathematics and computer science of the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel. His research interests lie within the theory of computation and are, specifically, ...

. Barak was at the

Institute for Advanced Study The Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) is an independent center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry located in Princeton, New Jersey. It has served as the academic home of internationally preeminent scholars, including Albert Ein ...

for two years from 2003 to 2005. He was an assistant professor in the computer science department of

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...

from 2005 to 2010 and an associate professor from 2010 to 2011. From 2010 to 2016, he was a researcher at Microsoft's New England research laboratory. Since 2016, he is the Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science in the

Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences The Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) is the engineering school within Harvard University's Faculty of Arts and Sciences, offering degrees in engineering and applied sciences to graduate students admitted ...

. He is a citizen of both

Israel Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...

and the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

Career

He co-authored, with

Sanjeev Arora Sanjeev Arora (born January 1968) is an Indian-American theoretical computer scientist who works in AI and Machine learning. Life Sanjeev scored the IIT JEE number 1 rank in 1986 He was a visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study in ...

, ''Computational Complexity: A Modern Approach'', published by Cambridge University Press in 2009. Barak also wrote extensive notes with David Steurer on the sum of squares algorithm and occasionally blogs on the ''Windows on Theory'' blog. In 2013, he,

Robert J. Goldston Robert James Goldston (born May 6, 1950) is a professor of astrophysics at Princeton University and a former director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory. Early life and education Goldston was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1950, the son of El ...

, and Alexander Glaser worked to design a "zero-knowledge" system to verify that warheads designated for disarmament are actually what they purport to be. By directing high-energy neutrons into the warhead under investigation, and comparing the distribution passing through to the distribution that passed through a known warhead, inspectors can determine whether a warhead being disarmed is genuine or a ruse designed to evade treaty requirements, without leaking nuclear secrets. For this work, he was selected for ''

Foreign Policy Foreign policy, also known as external policy, is the set of strategies and actions a State (polity), state employs in its interactions with other states, unions, and international entities. It encompasses a wide range of objectives, includ ...

s Top 100 Global Thinkers issue for 2014. In 2014 Barak was an invited speaker at the International Congress of Mathematics at

Seoul Seoul, officially Seoul Special Metropolitan City, is the capital city, capital and largest city of South Korea. The broader Seoul Metropolitan Area, encompassing Seoul, Gyeonggi Province and Incheon, emerged as the world's List of cities b ...

. With Mark Braverman,

Xi Chen Xi Chen () is a computer scientist. He is a professor of computer science at Columbia University. Chen won the 2021 Gödel Prize and Fulkerson Prize for his co-authored paper "Complexity of Counting CSP with Complex Weights" with Jin-Yi Cai. Bio ...

, and Anup Rao, he won the 2016

SIAM Thailand, officially the Kingdom of Thailand and historically known as Siam (the official name until 1939), is a country in Southeast Asia on the Mainland Southeast Asia, Indochinese Peninsula. With a population of almost 66 million, it spa ...

Outstanding Paper Prize for the paper “How to Compress Interactive Communication”. He was named to the 2022 class of

ACM Fellow ACM Fellowship is an award and fellowship that recognises outstanding members of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). The title of ACM Fellow A fellow is a title and form of address for distinguished, learned, or skilled individuals ...

s, "for contributions to theoretical computer science, in particular cryptography and computational complexity, and service to the theory community".

Patents

* U.S. Patent 7,003,677, “Method for operating proactively secured applications on an insecure system” with Amir Herzberg, Dalit Naor and Eldad Shai of IBM Haifa Research Lab. Filed November 1999, granted February 2006.

References

External links

* * * * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Barak, Boaz Israeli computer scientists American computer scientists 1974 births Living people Tel Aviv University alumni Weizmann Institute of Science alumni Princeton University faculty Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences faculty 21st-century Israeli mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians Theoretical computer scientists 2022 fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery 21st-century American scientists Israeli emigrants to the United States