Eli Ben-Sasson
Eli Ben-Sasson is the Co-Founder and President of StarkWare. He has been researching cryptographic and zero-knowledge proofs of computational integrity since 2001. His main interest lies in the mathematical foundations of computation and theoretical computer science, with a particular focus on computational complexity. His research has focused on formal proofs and their interaction with computation, including efficient probabilistically checkable proofs and their applications to verifying in a privacy-preserving manner the integrity of computations.
Eli Ben-Sasson Professional Experience / Academic History
Professional Experience
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Co-Founder, President and Chairman of the Board
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Founding Scientist
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Professor
Academic History
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Ph.D., Computer Science
CAREER
Ben-Sasson is a co-inventor of the STARK, FRI, and Zerocash protocols.
He has held research positions at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, Harvard, and MIT.
Most recently, he was a Professor of Computer Science at Technion, which he left to co-found StarkWare.
RESEARCH AND INTERESTS
Ben-Sasson is interested in understanding the intrinsic mathematical structure that leads to hard computational problems.
His previous work focused on identifying combinatorial properties that lead to hard problems in different contexts of theoretical computer science, such as propositional proof complexity, algorithms for intractable (NP-complete) problems, and property testing.
He continues to participate in the continuing investigation of the interplay between randomness and computation, which lays the foundations for modern cryptography.
He plays a fundamental role in the design of algorithms and computational complexity at large.
CURRENT APPOINTMENTS
Founding Scientist of the Zcash Company
Member of a Special Computer Science Group at Harvard Radcliffe Institute
EDUCATION
Ben-Sasson received his BSc and PhD in Computer Science from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.
He was an Amirin Scholar during his undergraduate studies.
During his graduate studies, he spent two academic years at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, one of them as a participant in the special year on theoretical computer science.
He won the Sire Charles Clore Fellowship for excellence in the natural sciences during his graduate studies.
He received the Dr. Shlomiuk Award from the Hebrew University for outstanding PhD research.
MEDIA AND APPEARANCES
Ben-Sasson has appeared as a guest on Real Vision.