DOCSLIB.ORG

Omer Reingold, March 2018

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Omer Reingold, March 2018 Omer Reingold, March 2018 My research is focused on a wide range of topics within the Foundations of Computer Science. Some of my most significant contributions are in Computational Complexity and the Foundations of Cryptography, with an emphasis on Randomness, Derandomization and Explicit Combinatorial Constructions. Other topics of my research include Algorithmic Fairness and Differential Privacy, Game Theory, Hashing and Data Structures, Resource Allocation and Data Analysis. Current Academic Employment: Professor of Computer Science, Stanford University, Since September. 2016. Education: • 1994-1998 Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel. Ph.D. in Computer Science. Thesis title: Pseudo-random synthesizers, functions and permutations. Advisor: Prof. Moni Naor. • 1991-1994 Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv, Israel. B.Sc in Mathematics and Computer Science - Summa Cum Laude. Selected Awards and distinctions (additional awards below): • The 2009 Gödel Prize for outstanding papers in the area of theoretical computer science (jointly with Salil Vadhan and Avi Wigderson). • 2005 ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award. Awarded by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) to “the outstanding young computer professional of the year.” • ACM Fellow (2014) Previous Academic Employment and Short Term Visits: • Feb 2015 – September 2016 Principal Research Engineer, Samsung Research America (SRA) • Nov 2014 – Feb 2015 (while on leave from Weizmann) Visiting Professor, Computer Science, Stanford University • July 2009 – Nov 2014 (while on leave from Weizmann) Principal Researcher, Microsoft Research Silicon Valley, Mountain View, CA, USA • Jan 2004 – June 2015 Professor (full Professor since October 2011), Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science, Department of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics, The Weizmann Institute of Science On sabbatical and leave of absence July 2009 – June 2015 • August 17 – November 15, 2005 Visiting scholar, Center for Research on Computation and Society, Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University. • 1999 – 2004 Senior technical staff member, Department of Secure Systems Research, AT&T Labs – Research, Florham Park, NJ, USA. • 1999 – 2004 (Concurrent to my employment at AT&T) Visiting member of the333 School of Mathematics, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ, USA. • 1998 – 1999 Postdoctoral fellow, Dept. of Applied Math and Computer Science, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel. Advisor: Prof. Adi Shamir. Professional Activities: • Steering Committee: ITCS • Editorial Board: SIAM Journal on Computing (SICOMP) (retired 2016) • Editorial Board: IACR Journal of Cryptology (retired 2016) • Editorial Board: ACM Transactions on Computation Theory (ToCT) (retired 2016) • Guest Editor: Special Issue of Approx-Random 2007, Algorithmica, Springer. • Scientific Board: Electronic Colloquium on Computational Complexity (ECCC) • Chair of program committee: FOCS 2013, CCC 2011, TCC 2009, Random 2007 • Served on the program committee of CRYPTO 2001 and RANDOM 2001, FOCS 2002, TCC 2004, EUROCRYPT 2004, ICALP 2005, FOCS 2005, TCC 2007, CRYPTO 2007, STOC 2008, CCC 2010, ITCS 2016. • Co-founding and organizing the group research blogs `Theory Dish’ (Stanford, May 2017) and `Windows On Theory’ (Microsoft Research, April 2012) as forums for exchanging ideas and debating topics of interest to the Theory of Computing (TOC) community. Contributing both technical and non-technical posts and in particular, initiating the research life stories project. • Co-organizing TOCA-SV meetings of the Sillicon-Valley Theory Community (starting in November 2016) • Co-Organizing the first ACM-SRC University competition (hosted by MSR-SVC and the Simons Institute), 2013 • Co-Director, Research School of Mathematics and Computer Science, Weizmann Institute (2007 - 2009). Other Awards and Fellowships (by reversed chronologic order): • 2015 IBM Pat Goldberg Memorial Best Paper Award (for the paper “The reusable holdout: Preserving validity in adaptive data analysis Science Magazine”, joint with Cynthia Dwork, Vitaly Feldman, Moritz Hardt, Toniann Pitassi) • 2011 Helen and Martin Kimmel Award for Innovative Investigation • 2011 SIAM (Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics) Outstanding Paper Prize, for the paper "Statistically Hiding Commitments and Statistical Zero-Knowledge Arguments from Any One-Way Function", joint with Iftach Haitner, Minh-Huyen Nguyen, Shien Jin Ong, and Salil Vadhan • The 2006 Prof. Pazy Memorial Research Award, given annually to the most outstanding and original BSF supported project in mathematics and computer science (awarded for my BSF grant joint with Prof. Luca Trevisan and Prof. Salil Vadhan). • 2007 Morris L. Levinson Prize in Mathematics awarded yearly by the Scientific Council of the Weizmann Institute to a single member of the Weizmann Institute. • CRYPTO 2006 best paper award for the paper “On the Power of the Randomized Iterate” (joint with Iftach Haitner and Danny Harnik). • ICALP 2006, track C, best paper award for the paper “Efficient Pseudorandom Generators from Exponentially Hard One-Way Functions” (joint with Iftach Haitner and Danny Harnik). • STOC 2005 best paper award for the paper “Undirected ST-connectivity in log- space”. • Rothschild award for postdoctoral studies, 1999. Awarded yearly by Yad-Hanadiv, Jerusalem, Israel to up to eighteen Israeli students of all areas, for postdoctoral studies abroad. • J. F. Kennedy prize for achievements in Ph.D. studies, 1999. Awarded yearly by the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel to four Ph.D. students of the Weizmann Institute. • Levi Eshkol scholarship for postdoctoral studies, 1998, Israel. Awarded by the ministry of science to students of Israeli universities. • The Dimitris N. Chorafas foundation prize for engineering and technology, 1998, Switzerland. Awarded yearly to 20-30 students of 26 “partner universities.” • Clore scholars award for Ph.D. studies, 1996, Israel. Awarded yearly to ten students of Israeli universities, in all fields of the natural sciences, including mathematics, physics, chemistry, the life sciences, earth sciences, agriculture, engineering and technology. • Undergraduate studies in the Excelling Program, Tel-Aviv University, Israel. • Yekutiel Federman scholarship, 1992, Israel. • Dean's honors lists, Tel-Aviv University, 1991-1994, Israel. Teaching: • Teaching CS 154: Introduction to Automata and Complexity Theory; Stanford Bulletin; 2016-2017 Autumn, 2017-2018 Autumn • Teaching CS 352: Pseudorandomness; Stanford Bulletin; 2016-2017 Spring • Creating and Teaching CS 62N: Let There Be Computations (a freshman seminar), 2017-2018 Winter • Adapting and Teaching CS 83: Playback Theater for Research, 2017-2018 Spring • Creating and Teaching the course: A Taste of the Theory of Computing, Weizmann Institute (Caesarea program for teachers), second semesters of 2008/09 • Teaching the course: Topics in Pseudorandomness, Weizmann Institute, both semesters of 2006/07 (second semester as a seminar). • Co-teaching the course: Introduction to Computational Learning Theory with Amir Shpilka, Weizmann Institute, both semesters of 2004/5. • Co-teaching the course: Topics in Pseudorandomness with Ronen Shaltiel at the Weizmann Institute, 2nd semester of 2003/04. • Co-teaching the course: Probabilistic Methods in Computer Science: Derandomization, with Moni Naor, Weizmann Institute, 2nd semester of 1998/99. Interns, Students, and Postdoctoral fellows: • Michael P. Kim, Current PhD student, Stanford • Huacheng Yu (PhD Stanford, Stanford, co-advising with Ryan Williams during his final quarters) • Amir Abboud (PhD Stanford, Stanford, co-advising with Virginia Williams during his final quarters) • Ron Rothblum, MSR-SV Summer Intern, 2013 • Kat Ellis, MSR-SV Summer Intern, 2013, 2014 • Raghu Meka, MSR-SV Summer Intern, 2011 • Shubhangi Saraf, MSR-SV Summer Intern, 2010 • Shachar Lovett, Ph.D., Weizmann, started 2006, completed 2010 • Ronen Gradwohl, direct Ph.D., Weizmann, started 2004, completed 2009. • Iftach Haitner, Ph.D., Weizmann, started 2004, completed 2008. • Eyal Rozenman, Postdoctoral fellow, Weizmann, year of 2004/2005. • Sergey Novikov, Masters, Weizmann, started 2008. • Klim Efremenko, Masters, Weizmann, started 2007, completed 2008. • Tal Kramer, Masters, Weizmann, started 2006, completed 2007. • Michal Igell, Masters, Weizmann, started 2004, completed 2005. Grants: • United States–Israel Binational Science Foundation (BSF), 2007, duration: four years, co-PI’s: Prof. Luca Trevisan, UC Berkeley and Salil Vadhan, Harvard University. Title: Pseudorandomness and Combinatorial Constructions. Awarded the 2006 Prof. Pazy Memorial Research Award, given annually to the most outstanding and original BSF supported project in mathematics and computer science. • Israel Science Foundation (ISF), 2005, duration: four years. Title: The Space Complexity of Graph Connectivity, Beyond the Symmetric Case. • United States–Israel Binational Science Foundation (BSF), 2003, duration: four years, co-PI’s: Prof. Luca Trevisan, UC Berkeley and Salil Vadhan, Harvard University. Title: Pseudorandomness and Combinatorial Constructions. Publication List: Each of my publications appears only once in this list. In case a paper was published both in a conference and in a journal, then usually the journal reference will appear first, directly followed by reference to the preliminary version. Author’s order for all papers is alphabetical as customary in my field. Publications appear in chronological order according to
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Reproducibility and Pseudo-Determinism in Log-Space
    Reproducibility and Pseudo-determinism in Log-Space by Ofer Grossman S.B., Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2017) Submitted to the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY May 2020 c Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2020. All rights reserved. Author...................................................................... Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science May 15, 2020 Certified by.................................................................. Shafi Goldwasser RSA Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Thesis Supervisor Accepted by................................................................. Leslie A. Kolodziejski Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Chair, Department Committee on Graduate Students 2 Reproducibility and Pseudo-determinism in Log-Space by Ofer Grossman Submitted to the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science on May 15, 2020, in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Abstract Acuriouspropertyofrandomizedlog-spacesearchalgorithmsisthattheiroutputsareoften longer than their workspace. This leads to the question: how can we reproduce the results of a randomized log space computation without storing the output or randomness verbatim? Running the algorithm again with new
    [Show full text]
  • FOCS 2005 Program SUNDAY October 23, 2005
    FOCS 2005 Program SUNDAY October 23, 2005 Talks in Grand Ballroom, 17th floor Session 1: 8:50am – 10:10am Chair: Eva´ Tardos 8:50 Agnostically Learning Halfspaces Adam Kalai, Adam Klivans, Yishay Mansour and Rocco Servedio 9:10 Noise stability of functions with low influences: invari- ance and optimality The 46th Annual IEEE Symposium on Elchanan Mossel, Ryan O’Donnell and Krzysztof Foundations of Computer Science Oleszkiewicz October 22-25, 2005 Omni William Penn Hotel, 9:30 Every decision tree has an influential variable Pittsburgh, PA Ryan O’Donnell, Michael Saks, Oded Schramm and Rocco Servedio Sponsored by the IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Mathematical Foundations of Computing 9:50 Lower Bounds for the Noisy Broadcast Problem In cooperation with ACM SIGACT Navin Goyal, Guy Kindler and Michael Saks Break 10:10am – 10:30am FOCS ’05 gratefully acknowledges financial support from Microsoft Research, Yahoo! Research, and the CMU Aladdin center Session 2: 10:30am – 12:10pm Chair: Satish Rao SATURDAY October 22, 2005 10:30 The Unique Games Conjecture, Integrality Gap for Cut Problems and Embeddability of Negative Type Metrics Tutorials held at CMU University Center into `1 [Best paper award] Reception at Omni William Penn Hotel, Monongahela Room, Subhash Khot and Nisheeth Vishnoi 17th floor 10:50 The Closest Substring problem with small distances Tutorial 1: 1:30pm – 3:30pm Daniel Marx (McConomy Auditorium) Chair: Irit Dinur 11:10 Fitting tree metrics: Hierarchical clustering and Phy- logeny Subhash Khot Nir Ailon and Moses Charikar On the Unique Games Conjecture 11:30 Metric Embeddings with Relaxed Guarantees Break 3:30pm – 4:00pm Ittai Abraham, Yair Bartal, T-H.
    [Show full text]
  • Secure Multi-Party Computation in Practice
    SECURE MULTI-PARTY COMPUTATION IN PRACTICE Marcella Christine Hastings A DISSERTATION in Computer and Information Science Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2021 Supervisor of Dissertation Nadia Heninger Adjunct Associate Professor, University of Pennsylvania Associate Professor, University of California, San Diego Graduate Group Chairperson Mayur Naik Professor and Computer and Information Science Graduate Group Chair Dissertation Committee Brett Hemenway Falk, Research Assistant Professor Stephan A. Zdancewic, Professor Sebastian Angel, Raj and Neera Singh Term Assistant Professor abhi shelat, Associate Professor at Khoury College of Computer Sciences, Northeastern University ACKNOWLEDGMENT This dissertation would have been much less pleasant to produce without the presence of many people in my life. I would like to thank my advisor and my dissertation committee for their helpful advice, direction, and long-distance phone calls over the past six years. I would like to thank my fellow PhD students at the University of Pennsylvania, especially the ever-changing but consistently lovely office mates in the Distributed Systems Laboratory and my cohort. Our shared tea-time, cookies, disappointments, and achievements provided an essential community that brought me great joy during my time at Penn. I would like to thank the mentors and colleagues who hosted me at the Security and Privacy Lab at the University of Washington in 2018, the Software & Application Innovation Lab at Boston University in 2019, and the Cryptography and Privacy Research group at Microsoft Research in 2020. My career and happiness greatly benefited from spending these summers exploring fresh research directions and rediscovering the world outside my own work.
    [Show full text]
  • A Decade of Lattice Cryptography
    Full text available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1561/0400000074 A Decade of Lattice Cryptography Chris Peikert Computer Science and Engineering University of Michigan, United States Boston — Delft Full text available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1561/0400000074 Foundations and Trends R in Theoretical Computer Science Published, sold and distributed by: now Publishers Inc. PO Box 1024 Hanover, MA 02339 United States Tel. +1-781-985-4510 www.nowpublishers.com [email protected] Outside North America: now Publishers Inc. PO Box 179 2600 AD Delft The Netherlands Tel. +31-6-51115274 The preferred citation for this publication is C. Peikert. A Decade of Lattice Cryptography. Foundations and Trends R in Theoretical Computer Science, vol. 10, no. 4, pp. 283–424, 2014. R This Foundations and Trends issue was typeset in LATEX using a class file designed by Neal Parikh. Printed on acid-free paper. ISBN: 978-1-68083-113-9 c 2016 C. Peikert All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission of the publishers. Photocopying. In the USA: This journal is registered at the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923. Authorization to photocopy items for in- ternal or personal use, or the internal or personal use of specific clients, is granted by now Publishers Inc for users registered with the Copyright Clearance Center (CCC). The ‘services’ for users can be found on the internet at: www.copyright.com For those organizations that have been granted a photocopy license, a separate system of payment has been arranged.
    [Show full text]
  • Hard Communication Channels for Steganography
    Hard Communication Channels for Steganography Sebastian Berndt1 and Maciej Liśkiewicz2 1 University of Lübeck, Lübeck, Germany [email protected] 2 University of Lübeck, Lübeck, Germany [email protected] Abstract This paper considers steganography – the concept of hiding the presence of secret messages in legal communications – in the computational setting and its relation to cryptography. Very re- cently the first (non-polynomial time) steganographic protocol has been shown which, for any communication channel, is provably secure, reliable, and has nearly optimal bandwidth. The security is unconditional, i.e. it does not rely on any unproven complexity-theoretic assumption. This disproves the claim that the existence of one-way functions and access to a communication channel oracle are both necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of secure steganogra- phy in the sense that secure and reliable steganography exists independently of the existence of one-way functions. In this paper, we prove that this equivalence also does not hold in the more realistic setting, where the stegosystem is polynomial time bounded. We prove this by construct- ing (a) a channel for which secure steganography exists if and only if one-way functions exist and (b) another channel such that secure steganography implies that no one-way functions exist. We therefore show that security-preserving reductions between cryptography and steganography need to be treated very carefully. 1998 ACM Subject Classification E.3 Data Encryption Keywords and phrases provable secure steganography, cryptographic assumptions, pseudoran- dom functions, one-way functions, signature schemes Digital Object Identifier 10.4230/LIPIcs.ISAAC.2016.16 1 Introduction Digital steganography has recently received substantial interest in modern computer science since it allows secret communication without revealing its presence.
    [Show full text]
  • Algebraic Pseudorandom Functions with Improved Efficiency from the Augmented Cascade*
    Algebraic Pseudorandom Functions with Improved Efficiency from the Augmented Cascade* DAN BONEH† HART MONTGOMERY‡ ANANTH RAGHUNATHAN§ Department of Computer Science, Stanford University fdabo,hartm,[email protected] September 8, 2020 Abstract We construct an algebraic pseudorandom function (PRF) that is more efficient than the classic Naor- Reingold algebraic PRF. Our PRF is the result of adapting the cascade construction, which is the basis of HMAC, to the algebraic settings. To do so we define an augmented cascade and prove it secure when the underlying PRF satisfies a property called parallel security. We then use the augmented cascade to build new algebraic PRFs. The algebraic structure of our PRF leads to an efficient large-domain Verifiable Random Function (VRF) and a large-domain simulatable VRF. 1 Introduction Pseudorandom functions (PRFs), first defined by Goldreich, Goldwasser, and Micali [GGM86], are a fun- damental building block in cryptography and have numerous applications. They are used for encryption, message integrity, signatures, key derivation, user authentication, and many other cryptographic mecha- nisms. Beyond cryptography, PRFs are used to defend against denial of service attacks [Ber96, CW03] and even to prove lower bounds in learning theory. In a nutshell, a PRF is indistinguishable from a truly random function. We give precise definitions in the next section. The fastest PRFs are built from block ciphers like AES and security is based on ad-hoc inter- active assumptions. In 1996, Naor and Reingold [NR97] presented an elegant PRF whose security can be deduced from the hardness of the Decision Diffie-Hellman problem (DDH) defined in the next section.
    [Show full text]
  • Omer Reingold, June 2017
    Omer Reingold, June 2017 My research is focused on a wide range of topics within the Foundations of Computer Science. In particular, my core areas, which include my most significant contributions, are Computational Complexity and the Foundations of Cryptography, with an emphasis on Randomness, Derandomization and Explicit Combinatorial Constructions. However, I am interested in a much broader range of topics (some closer and some further away from my core areas). Examples include Differential Privacy and Fairness, Game Theory, Hashing and Data Structures, Resource Allocation and Data Analysis. Current Academic Employment: Professor of Computer Science, Stanford University, Since Feb. 2015. Education: • 1994-1998 Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel. Ph.D. in Computer Science. Thesis title: Pseudo-random synthesizers, functions and permutations. Advisor: Prof. Moni Naor. • 1991-1994 Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv, Israel. B.Sc in Mathematics and Computer Science - Summa Cum Laude. Selected Awards and distinctions (additional awards below): • The 2009 Gödel Prize for outstanding papers in the area of theoretical computer science (jointly with Salil Vadhan and Avi Wigderson). • 2005 ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award. Awarded by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) to “the outstanding young computer professional of the year.” • ACM Fellow (2014) Previous Academic Employment and Short Term Visits: • Feb 2015 – September 2016 Principal Research Engineer, Samsung Research America (SRA) • Nov 2014 – Feb 2015 (while on leave from
    [Show full text]
  • Immunizing Encryption Schemes from Decryption Errors
    Immunizing Encryption Schemes from Decryption Errors Cynthia Dwork1, Moni Naor2, and Omer Reingold2 1 Microsoft Research, SVC 1065 L’Avenida Mountain View, CA 94043 [email protected] 2 Weizmann Institute of Science Rehovot 76100, Israel {moni.naor,omer.reingold}@weizmann.ac.il Abstract. We provide methods for transforming an encryption scheme susceptible to decryption errors into one that is immune to these errors. Immunity to decryption errors is vital when constructing non-malleable and chosen ciphertext secure encryption schemes via current techniques; in addition, it may help defend against certain cryptanalytic techniques, such as the attack of Proos [33] on the NTRU scheme. When decryption errors are very infrequent, our transformation is ex- tremely simple and efficient, almost free. To deal with significant error probabilities, we apply amplification techniques translated from a re- lated information theoretic setting. These techniques allow us to correct even very weak encryption schemes where in addition to decryption er- rors, an adversary has substantial probability of breaking the scheme by decrypting random messages (without knowledge of the secret key). In other words, under these weak encryption schemes, the only guaranteed difference between the legitimate recipient and the adversary is in the frequency of decryption errors. All the above transformations work in a standard cryptographic model; specifically, they do not rely on a random oracle. We also consider the random oracle model, where we give a simple trans- formation from a one-way encryption scheme which is error-prone into one that is immune to errors. We conclude that error-prone cryptosystems can be used in order to create more secure cryptosystems.
    [Show full text]
  • Computational Hardness of Optimal Fair Computation: Beyond Minicrypt
    Computational Hardness of Optimal Fair Computation: Beyond Minicrypt Hemanta K. Maji Department of Computer Science, Purdue University, USA [email protected] Mingyuan Wang Department of Computer Science, Purdue University, USA [email protected] Abstract Secure multi-party computation allows mutually distrusting parties to compute securely over their private data. However, guaranteeing output delivery to honest parties when the adversarial parties may abort the protocol has been a challenging objective. As a representative task, this work considers two-party coin-tossing protocols with guaranteed output delivery, a.k.a., fair coin- tossing. In the information-theoretic plain model, as in two-party zero-sum games, one of the parties can force an output with certainty. In the commitment-hybrid, any r-message coin-tossing proto- √ √ col is 1/ r-unfair, i.e., the adversary can change the honest party’s output distribution by 1/ r in the statistical distance. Moran, Naor, and Segev (TCC–2009) constructed the first 1/r-unfair protocol in the oblivious transfer-hybrid. No further security improvement is possible because Cleve (STOC–1986) proved that 1/r-unfairness is unavoidable. Therefore, Moran, Naor, and Segev’s coin-tossing protocol is optimal. However, is oblivious transfer necessary for optimal fair coin-tossing? Maji and Wang (CRYPTO–2020) proved that any coin-tossing protocol using one-way func- √ tions in a black-box manner is at least 1/ r-unfair. That is, optimal fair coin-tossing is impossible in Minicrypt. Our work focuses on tightly characterizing the hardness of computation assump- tion necessary and sufficient for optimal fair coin-tossing within Cryptomania, outside Minicrypt.
    [Show full text]
  • Fall 2016 Dear Computer Science Alumni and Friends, These Are
    Alex Aiken Alcatel-Lucent Professor Tencent Chair, Department of Computer Science Fall 2016 Dear Computer Science Alumni and Friends, These are exciting times in computer science, with research, education, and the industry continuing to evolve at a rapid and seemingly increasing rate. The role of computer science is also changing, shifting from being a dynamic, exciting intellectual field driving technological change to becoming a dynamic, exciting intellectual field that is a significant component of many other fields of inquiry as well as a major social and cultural force. The effects of these changes on academic computer science departments, at least in the United States, are well known: soaring enrollments at all levels; a major expansion of research efforts, particularly in collaborations with other fields; and the stresses associated with trying to adapt and grow to meet these challenges and opportunities. The CS department at Stanford has been riding this wave with excitement and enthusiasm—and sometimes exhaustion! In this newsletter, I’ll talk about some of the changes that are taking place. A key part of this process has been discussions with the alumni and friends of the department; many of you have helped by sharing your thoughts with me and other faculty, for which we are sincerely grateful. Faculty Hiring The School of Engineering and the department have agreed that the CS department will grow by a net of 10 full-time faculty positions, from about 40 full-time positions today to about 50. Many of you will no doubt recognize that this won’t change our hiring rate (we’ve been hiring as fast as we can for several years), but it will allow us to take a step back and think about the future composition of the department.
    [Show full text]
  • Omer Reingold, June 2019
    Omer Reingold, June 2019 My research is focused on a wide range of topics within the Foundations of Computer Science. Some of my most significant contributions are in Computational Complexity and the Foundations of Cryptography, with an emphasis on Randomness, Derandomization and Explicit Combinatorial Constructions. Much of my current work is in Algorithmic Fairness. Current Academic Employment: The Rajeev Motwani Professor of Computer Science, Stanford University. In Stanford since September. 2016. Education: • 1994-1998 Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel. Ph.D. in Computer Science. Thesis title: Pseudo-random synthesizers, functions and permutations. Advisor: Prof. Moni Naor. • 1991-1994 Tel-Aviv University, Tel-Aviv, Israel. B.Sc in Mathematics and Computer Science - Summa Cum Laude. Selected Awards and distinctions (additional awards below): • The 2009 Gödel Prize for outstanding papers in the area of theoretical computer science (jointly with Salil Vadhan and Avi Wigderson). • 2005 ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award. Awarded by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) to “the outstanding young computer professional of the year.” • ACM Fellow (2014) Previous Academic Employment and Short Term Visits: • Feb 2015 – September 2016 Principal Research Engineer, Samsung Research America (SRA) • Nov 2014 – Feb 2015 (while on leave from Weizmann) Visiting Professor, Computer Science, Stanford University • July 2009 – Nov 2014 (while on leave from Weizmann) Principal Researcher, Microsoft Research Silicon Valley, Mountain View, CA, USA • Jan 2004 – June 2015 Professor (full Professor since October 2011), Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science, Department of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics, The Weizmann Institute of Science On sabbatical and leave of absence July 2009 – June 2015 • August 17 – November 15, 2005 Visiting scholar, Center for Research on Computation and Society, Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University.
    [Show full text]
  • Trustworthy AI: a Computational Perspective
    Trustworthy AI: A Computational Perspective HAOCHEN LIU∗, Michigan State University, USA YIQI WANG∗, Michigan State University, USA WENQI FAN, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong XIAORUI LIU, Michigan State University, USA YAXIN LI, Michigan State University, USA SHAILI JAIN, Twitter, USA YUNHAO LIU, Tsinghua University, China ANIL K. JAIN, Michigan State University, USA JILIANG TANG, Michigan State University, USA In the past few decades, artificial intelligence (AI) technology has experienced swift developments, changing everyone’s daily life and profoundly altering the course of human society. The intention behind developing AI was and is to benefit humans by reducing labor, increasing everyday conveniences, and promoting social good. However, recent research and AI applications indicate that AI can cause unintentional harm to humans by, for example, making unreliable decisions in safety-critical scenarios or undermining fairness by inadvertently discriminating against a group or groups. Consequently, trustworthy AI has recently garnered increased attention regarding the need to avoid the adverse effects that AI could bring to people, so people can fully trust and live in harmony with AI technologies. A tremendous amount of research on trustworthy AI has been conducted and witnessed in recent years. In this survey, we present a comprehensive appraisal of trustworthy AI from a computational perspective to help readers understand the latest technologies for achieving trustworthy AI. Trustworthy AI is a large and complex subject, involving various dimensions. In this work, we focus on six of the most crucial dimensions in achieving trustworthy AI: (i) Safety & Robustness, (ii) Nondiscrimination & Fairness, (iii) Explainability, (iv) Privacy, (v) Accountability & Auditability, and (vi) Environmental Well-being.
    [Show full text]