CENTER FOR INFORMATION AND COMPUTATION SECURITY (CICS)
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About the Center: The CICS is the inter-disciplinary center founded in the fall of 2003 at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science to promote all aspects of research and education in cryptography and computer security.

Director: Prof. Rafail Ostrovsky
Associate Director: Prof. Amit Sahai

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Ph.D. Students; Postdoctoral Scholars and Visitors Alumni
Ph.D. Students
  • Arman Yousefi (CS)
  • Prabhanjan Ananth (CS)
  • Dakshita Khurana (CS)
  • Saikrishna Badrinarayanan (CS)
  • Josh Lampkins (MATH)
Postdoctoral Fellows
  • Wutichai Chongchitmate (postdoc 2016 -- present)
  • Silas Richelson (postdoc 2014 -- 2015; now Postdoc at MIT)
  • Anat Paskin (postdoc 2012 -- 2015; now a tenure-track faculty at Ariel University, Israel)
  • Vassilis Zikas (postdoc 2012 -- 2015; now a tenure-track faculty at RPI)
  • Alessandra Scafuro (postdoc 2012 -- 2015; now postdoc at Boston Univeristy)
  • Bhavana Kanukurthi (postodc 2011 -- 2014; now a tenure-track faculty at Indian Institute of Science (IISC), Bangalore, India)
  • Jens Groth (2005-2007): Now tenured faculty at University College of London.
Visitors
  • Dr. Juan Garay (several short term visits 2010 -- present)
  • Prof. Ivan Vinsconti (several short, medium and long term visits from 2009 to 2016 for a taotal of 3.5 years)
  • Prof. Yuval Ishai (subbaticals, short term visits, 2009 -- present)
  • Prof. Giuseppe (a.k.a. Pino) Persiano (several short term visits 2012--present)
  • Prof. Yuval Rabani (annual summer visits 2009 -- present)
  • Prof. Eyal Kushulevitz (subbatical, short term visits, 2003 -- presnet)
  • Dr. Serge Fehr (short term visit, 2011)
  • Claudio Orlandi (6-month visit from Aaharus, 2010)
  • Will Rosenbaum (MATH Ph.D. 2016, now postdoctoral researcher at Tel-Aviv University.)
  • Wutichai Chongchitmate (MATH Ph.D. 2016, now postdoctoral researcher at UCLA)
  • David Felber (CS Ph.D. 2015, now researcher at Google.)
  • Alan Roytman (CS Ph.D. 2014, now postdoctoral researcher at Tel-Aviv University Computer Science)
  • Ran Gelles (CS Ph.D. 2014, now tenure-track faculty at Bar-Ilan University)
  • Silas Richelson (MATH Ph.D. 2014, now Postdoc at MIT)
  • Akshay Wadia (CS Ph.D. 2014, now researcher at Silicon-Valley Startup)
  • Chongwon Cho (CS Ph.D. 2013, now researcher at HRL)
  • Sanjam Garg (CS Ph.D. 2012), now a tenure-track faculty of CS at U.C. Berkely.) (Sanjam won 2013 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award)
  • Cheng-Keui Lee (CS Ph.D. 2012, now Security Researcher, LinkedIn)
  • Abhishek Jain (CS Ph.D., 2012, now tenure-track faculty at Johns Hopkins University.)
  • Hakan Seyalioglu (Math Ph.D., 2012, now researcher at Google.)
  • Joshua Baron (Math Ph.D., 2012, now researcher at RAND corporation.)
  • Clint Givens (Math Ph.D., 2012, now tenure track Math faculty at University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma)
  • Vladimir Braverman (C.S. Ph.D. 2011, now C.S. tenure-track faculty at Johns Hopkins University.)
  • Nishanth Chandran (C.S. Ph.D. 2011, now a researcher at MSR India)
  • Omkant Pandey (CS Ph.D., 2010, nowa tenure track faculty at Stony Brook Computer Sccience Department.)
  • Brett Hemenway (Math Ph.D., 2010, now a tenure-track research faculty at U. Penn.)
  • Paul Bunn (Math Ph.D., 2010, researcher at Stealth Software Technologies, Inc.)
  • Ryan Moriarty (CS Ph.D., 2010, entrepreneur in Silicon Valley. Startups: apprats, flotate.)
  • Vipul Goyal (CS Ph.D., 2009, now tenure-track associate professor at CMU.)
  • Steve Lu (Math Ph.D., 2009, researcher at Stealth Software Technologies, Inc.)
  • William Skeith (Math Ph.D., 2007; CS tenured faculty at City College of NY).
Faculty with interest in security and cryptography: Mission Statement:

The goal of the CICS center is to provide techniques and solutions for securing both national and private sector information infrastructures. We are interested in both long-term foundational work and short-term applied research to support the development of cryptographic foundations and critical security tools and techniques.

Our mission is to explore fault-tolerant solutions that are necessary to achieve two conflicting goals: making critical national cyber infrastructures more accessible, ubiquitous, and at the same time resilient against a wide range of both internal and external coordinated attacks, while simultaneously providing strong privacy and security guarantees to both individuals and organizations. The work of the center members ranges from developing cryptographic algorithms, definitions, and proofs of security to software and hardware implementations and deployment of new security mechanisms in real systems and applications.

Equally important, the center members explore the interplay of cryptography and security with other fields, including algorithms, complexity theory, networks, communication complexity, machine learning, compiler and language design, operating systems, hardware design, and distributed computing.