Rafail Ostrovsky

Selected Honors and Awards

• Amazon Research Award (AWS Cryptography), 2025;
• Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, inducted in December 2024;
• Pazy Memorial Research Award, 2023;
• UCLA Faculty Undergraduate Mentor Award, 2023;
• Amazon Faculty Research Award, 2023;
• EUROCRYPT Conference Best Paper Award, 2022;
• IEEE Computer Society W. Wallace McDowell Award, 2022;
• Cisco Faculty Research Award, 2022;
• Norman E. Friedmann Endowed Chair in Knowledge Sciences, 2022;
• Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), inducted in 2021;
• Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), inducted in 2021;
• JP Morgan Chase Faculty Award, 2021;
• Google Faculty Award, 2020;
• JP Morgan Chase Faculty Award, 2020;
• Distinguished Professor, UCLA, July 2019;
• Foreign Member of Academia Europaea, inducted in 2019;
• JP Morgan Chase Faculty Award, 2019;
• RSA Award for Excellence in the Field of Mathematics, 2018;
• IEEE Computer Society Edward J. McCluskey Technical Achievement Award, 2017;
• Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), inducted in 2017;
• Distinguished Lecturer of the Year, Georgia Institute of Technology, Computer Science Department, 2015;
• Distinguished Lecturer of the Year, Johns Hopkins University, Computer Science Department, 2014;
• Big Thinker Lecture Series, Yahoo Labs, Sunnyvale, California, 2014;
• Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation Research Award, 2014;
• Fellow of the International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR), inducted in 2013;
• Pazy Memorial Research Award, 2012;
• B. John Garrick Foundation Award, 2011;
• Invitee to the Third Annual National Security Scholars Conference, 2011, by personal invitation of the Honorable Michael B. Donley, Secretary of the Air Force;
• Paper selected for a plenary talk at Quantum Information Processing (QIP), 2011;
• Plenary Invited Speaker, FBI Conference on Cybersecurity and Law Enforcement, 2009;
• Best Paper Award, International Conference on Computing and Combinatorics (COCOON), 2008;
• Plenary Invited Speaker, Public Key Cryptography international conference, 2007;
• IBM Faculty Award, 2006;
• Xerox Corporate Innovation Faculty Awards, 2006 and 2005;
• Xerox Corporation Distinguished Lecture Series invited speaker, 2006;
• Teradata Faculty Research Award, 2005;
• Distinguished Cryptographer of the Year Lecture Series, NTT Labs, Kanagawa, Japan, 2005;
• B. John Garrick Foundation Research Award, 2005;
• OKAWA Foundation Research Award, 2004;
• Three SAIC Awards for the best published work of the year, 1999, 2001, and 2002;
• Bellcore Prize for excellence in research, 1996;
• Henry H. Taub Prize for "One-Way Functions are Essential for Non-Trivial Zero-Knowledge," 1993;
• NSF Mathematical Sciences Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, 1992 - 1995;
• IBM Graduate Fellowship, 1990 - 1992;
• SUNY at Buffalo Department of Mathematics Undergraduate Graduation Honors: With Highest Distinction, 1984;
• Multiple papers solicited to journal special issues dedicated to highest PC-ranked STOC/FOCS articles.

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Professional Activities

Current

• Program committee member, CRYPTO 2027.
• Program committee member, STOC 2027.
• Program committee member, EUROCRYPT 2027.
• Steering Committee member IEEE FOCS Conference 2019 - present.
• Advisory Board Member, Mōbby (Sunday Group Incorporated), 2019 - present.
• Editorial Board member Journal of ACM 2014 - present.
• Board Member Stealth Software Technologies, Inc. 2008 - present.
• Editorial Board member Algorithmica 2005 - present.
• Editorial Board member International Journal of Information and Computer Security. 2004 - present.
• Steering Committee member Conference on Security and Cryptography for Networks 2004 - present.

Past

• Editorial Board member Journal of Cryptology 2006 - 2025.
• The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, ad-hoc Committee on Future of Encryption 2020 - 2022
• Johns Hopkins University Computer Science Department External Advisory Board 2017 - 2021.
• Advisory Board Member UCLA Advisory Board On Privacy and Data Protection 2010 - 2020.
• Member of the Theory of Computing Committee: Ad hoc committee to combat harassment and discrimination in the Theory of Computing community April 2017 - October 2018.
• General Chair FOCS 2017
• Chair of the IEEE Technical Committee on Mathematical Foundations of Computing 2015 - 2018.
• General Chair FOCS 2016
• General Chair FOCS 2015
• Program Committee Chair FOCS 2011 (October 22 - 25, 2011 in Palm Springs, CA.)
• Steering Committee member UC Privacy and Information Security Steering Committee,
  (Appointed by University of California President, Mark G. Yudof, see Committee report.) 2010 - 2014.
• Program Committee Chair, Sixth Conference on Security and Cryptography for Networks Amalfi, September 10 - 12, 2008.
  The proceedings of SCN 2008 appeared in LNCS 5229 and are available on-line. (See also Italian press coverage.)
• Program Chair, Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics semester-long NSF-FUNDED program dedicated to Cybersecurity. September - December, 2006. Over 200 participants.
• Co-organizer, IPAM Workshop Locally decodable codes, PIR, privacy-preserving data-mining, and encryption with special properties. October 25 - 28, 2006, IPAM.
• Co-organizer, IPAM Workshop Foundations of secure multi-party computation and zero-knowledge and its applications. November 13 - 17, 2006, IPAM.
• Co-chair, Dagstuhl Workshop Anonymous Communication and its Applications October 9 - 14, 2005.
• Co-organizer, IPAM Workshop Multiscale Geometry and Analysis in High Dimensions October 19 - 23, 2004.
• Co-organizer, DIMACS Workshop Cryptographic Protocols in Complex Environments May 15 - 17, 2002.
• Program committee member, CRYPTO 2025.
• Program committee member, FOCS 2024.
• Program committee member, CRYPTO 2024.
• Program committee member, Workshop on Privacy Enhancing Technologies for the Homeland Security Enterprise, 2022.
• Program committee member Eurocrypt 2019, Darmstadt, Germany.
• Program committee member Eurocrypt 2017 30 April to 4 of May, 2017, Paris.
• Program committee member PKC 2016 March 2016.
• Guest editor, SIAM Journal on Computing special issue dedicated to selected papers from FOCS 2011.
• Program committee member FIFTEENTH IMA INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON CRYPTOGRAPHY AND CODING December 2015.
• Program committee member ITCS-2012 Boston, January 8 - 10, 2012.
• Program committee member PODS-2011.
• Program committee member ICALP-2011.
• Program committee member EUROCRYPT-2011.
• Program committee member CT-RSA 2011.
• Program committee member TCC-2010: Seventh Theory of Cryptography Conference, 2010.
• Program committee member EUROCRYPT-2009 Cologne, April 26 - 30, 2009.
• Program committee member Algosensors-2009 5th International Workshop on Algorithmic Aspects of Wireless Sensor Networks 2009.
• Program committee member FOCS-2008 49th Annual IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science.
• Program committee member PKC-2007: International Workshop on Practice and Theory in Public Key Cryptography, (Apr 17 - 19, 2007, Beijing). China 2007
• Program committee member ACISP-2007 12th Australian Conference on Information Security and Privacy July 2 - 6, 2007, Townsville, Queensland, Australia.
• Program committee member ICALP-2006: 33rd International Colloquium on Automata, Languages and Programming, July 9 - 16, 2006, Venice, Italy
• Program committee member STOC-2006: Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing, May 2006.
• Program committee member PKC 2006: International Workshop on Practice and Theory in Public Key Cryptography, April 24 - 26, New York City, USA.
• Program committee member INDOCRYPT-2005 December 10 - 12, 2005 Indian Institute of Science Bangalore, India, 2005.
• Program committee member EUROCRYPT-2005 Aarhus, May 22 - 26, 2005.
• Program committee member TCC-2005: Second Theory of Cryptography Conference, Feb 2005.
• Program committee member SCN-2004 Security in Communication Networks 2004 to be held on September 8 - 10 in Amalfi, Italy.
• Program committee member PODC-2004: 23rd Annual ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing, July 2004.
• Program committee member CRYPTO-2004: 24th Annual IACR/IEEE Conference on Cryptologic Research, August 2004.
• Program committee member CRYPTO-2003: 23rd Annual IACR/IEEE Conference on Cryptologic Research, August 2003.
• Program committee member STOC-2003: Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing, May 2003.
• Program committee member CRYPTO-2002: 22nd Annual IACR/IEEE Conference on Cryptologic Research, 2002.
• Program committee member RANDOM-2002: The 6th International Workshop on Randomization and Approximation Techniques in Computer Science, 2002.
• Program committee member SCN-2002: Third Workshop on Security in Communication Networks, September 2002, Amalfi, Italy.
• Program committee member STOC-2000: Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing, 2000.
• Program committee member SODA-2000: Eleventh Annual ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms, January 1 - 9, 2000, San Francisco.
• Program committee member SCN-99: Second Workshop on Security in Communication Networks, September 1999, Italy.
• Program committee member CRYPTO-98: 18th Annual IACR/IEEE Conference on Cryptologic Research 1998.
• Program committee member ISTCS-97: 5th ISRAEL Symposium on Theory of Computing and Systems, 1997.

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Invited Talks

• Distinguished lecture: "Randomness Complexity of Privacy", SCP Colloquium, School of Cybersecurity and Privacy, Georgia Institute of Technology, September 24, 2026.
• Strachey Lecture: "Advances in Garbled Circuits", University of Oxford, Great Britain, October 21, 2025. [announcement]
• Invited keynote: "Anonymous Permutation Routing", Theory and Practice of Laconic Cryptography (TPLC), EUROCRYPT 2025 affiliated workshop, Madrid, Spain, May 4, 2025.
• Invited talk: "The Multiple Faces of Deniability", NIST Special Topics on Privacy and Public Auditability (STPPA), Event 7, virtual, January 16, 2025. [slides]
• Invited Keynote Speaker: "Survey of Advances in Zero Knowledge and Its Applications," Texas A&M Global Cyber Research Institute Summit, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, September 20, 2024.
• Invited talk: "Privacy Enhancing Technologies: From Theory to Practice," University of California Cybersecurity Summit, UCLA, April 19, 2023. [program]
• Invited talk: "Deriving Actionable Intelligence from Siloed Data," inaugural talk in the Department of Homeland Security seminar series "Challenges and Opportunities for Privacy Enhancing Technologies in the Homeland Security Enterprise," hosted by the Center for Accelerating Operational Efficiency, a Department of Homeland Security Center of Excellence, November 10, 2022.
• Invited talk: Japan-U.S. Workshop on Privacy Enhancing Technologies and Artificial Intelligence, organized by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, June 23, 2022.
• Invited talk: "Possible Uses of Multi-Party Computation at the Census Bureau", Summer at Census, hosted by the Center for Optimization & Data Science, U.S. Census Bureau, May 19, 2022.
• Invited talk: "Linking Without Leaking: Private Set Intersection," Workshop on Privacy Enhancing Technologies for the Homeland Security Enterprise, June 21, 2022.
• Invited talk: "Secure Computation on Datasets", NIST Special Topics on Privacy and Public Auditability (STPPA), Event 2, virtual (with Steve Lu), April 19, 2021. [slides] [video]
• Invited talk: "Stewardship of Private Data with Cryptography" Technological Advisory Council of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), August 12, 2020.
• Invited talk: "Keeping the Internet Safe" Board on Mathematical Sciences and Analytics (BMSA) within the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, March 17, 2020
• Talk: "A Survey of Blockchain Building Blocks and Techniques", TTI/Vanguard Conference on Blockchain and Other Networks, Washington, D.C., September 12 - 13, 2019.
• Invited talk: "CyLab Distinguished Seminar", Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, February 18, 2019.
• Invited talk: Distinguished Lecture Series, Cloud Security, Texas A&M University, Computer Science Department, October, 2018.
• Invited Keynote Lecture: workshop on "Mathematics of Information-Theoretic Cryptography" Institute of Mathematical Sciences (IMS) of National University of Singapore and Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, September 19 - 30, 2016.
• Invited Keynote Speaker Bay Area Crypto Day, "Adaptively secure garbled circuits from AES" Stanford, May 2nd, 2016.
• Talk: "Delegation of Computation into the Cloud", Parts 1 and 2, UCI Cryptography Day, University of California, Irvine, April 19, 2016.
• Invited talk: Distinguished Lecturer of the Year, Georgia Institute of Technology, Computer Science Department, December, 2015.
• Invited talk: "Cloud Security: Threats, Challenges and Solutions", Distinguished Lecturer of the Year, Johns Hopkins University Computer Science Department, November 13, 2014.
• Talk: "War on Terror vs. Individual Privacy", Mathematics of Politics workshop, IPAM, UCLA, April 22, 2014. [program and video]
• Invited talk: Big Thinker Lecture Series Yahoo Labs, Sunnyvale, California, March 19, 2014.
• Invited talk: "Private RAM Computation", with Daniel Wichs, Visions of Cryptography workshop, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel, December 12, 2013.
• Invited talk: Novel Privacy-Enhancing Technologies UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, 2012 Technology Forum, March 13, 2012.
• Invited talk: NIST Privacy Enhancing Cryptography Meeting By invitation only Workshop for Industry, Government and Academia, November 8, 2011.
• Invited talk: Success Stories and Challenges in Cybersecurity September 21, 2011, Institute of Pure and Applied Mathematics, Los Angeles.
• Invited Scholar: U.S. Air Force Third Annual National Security Scholars Conference. April 26, 2011.
  (Invited by the Honorable Michael B. Donley, Secretary of the Air Force.)
• Invited talk: "Improved Fault Tolerance and Secure Computation on Sparse Networks", Mathematics of Information-Theoretic Cryptography workshop, IPAM, UCLA, March 3, 2011.
• Invited panelist: UCLA 2011 Technology Forum March 1, 2011.
• Invited talk: Trends in Theoretical Cryptography (TTC 2011) January 10 - 12, 2011, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.
• Invited talk: MIT CSAIL Theory Colloquium December 7, 2010.
• Invited talk: MIT Quantum Information Processing (QIP) seminar, December 6, 2010.
• Invited talk: Caltech Computing and Mathematical Sciences Lecture Series November 17, 2010.
• Invited talk: Aerospace Corporation Information Assurance Technology Department, Computers and Software Division, October 7, 2010.
• Invited talk: 2010 Lockheed-Martin Anti-Tamper Conference, August 26, 2010, Fort Worth, Texas.
• Invited talk: Symantec Research Labs's Seminar - Security in the Cloud, Symantec 900 Corporate Pointe, Culver City, CA 90230, July 29, 2010.
• Invited talk: 2009 Workshop on Cryptographic Protocols and Public-Key Cryptography May 24 - 29, 2009, Bertinoro, Italy.
• Distinguished Lecturer Seminar Series, U.C. Irvine Computer Science Department, May 15, 2009.
• Plenary invited speaker at International Conference on Cyber Security 2009 organized by FBI and Fordham university.
• Plenary keynote speaker at PKC-2007 International Workshop on Practice and Theory in Public Key Cryptography, China 2007.
• Invited talk: TTI/Vanguard Conference on Identity & Trust, Dallas, Texas, February 2007.
• Invited talk: Sun Microsystems, 2007 Distinguished Lecture Series, January 2007, Palo Alto, CA, USA
• Talk: "Private Searching on Streaming Data", IPAM Workshop II: Locally Decodable Codes, Private Information Retrieval, Privacy-Preserving Data-Mining, and Public Key Encryption with Special Properties, UCLA, October 25, 2006. [slides] [audio]
• Invited tutorial: Series of IPAM lectures on Private Information Retrieval September 2006, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
• Two invited tutorials at Homeland Defense and Security Conference 18 - 21 October 2006, Sorrento, Italy.
• Invited talk: 2006 Xerox Corporation Distinguished Lecture Series Los Angeles, July 2006. USA [Academia Europaea profile]
• Invited talk: Workshop on Data Surveillance and Privacy Protection Workshop Harvard, June 2006.
• Seminar: "Cryptography from Anonymity", CS201 Seminar, UCLA, January 10, 2006.
• Invited talk: Workshop on classical & quantum information security Caltech, December 15 - 18, 2005.
• Seminar: "How to Compile Searching Software So that It Is Impossible to Reverse-Engineer", CS201 Seminar, UCLA, December 6, 2005.
• Invited talk: Interdepartmental Seminar on Algorithmics University of Rome "La Sapienza", Italy. November 21, 2005.
• Invited talk: 2005 Distinguished Cryptographer Lecture Series NTT Labs, Kanagawa, Japan, October 2005. [Academia Europaea profile]
• Invited talk: Workshop on Cryptography and Information Security 2005 Tokyo, Japan, October 21, 2005.
• Invited talk: IEEE Information Theory Workshop on Theory and Practice in Information-Theoretic Security Awaji Island, Japan, October 16 - 19, 2005.
• Invited talk: Dagstuhl Workshop. Germany, October 9 - 14, 2005.
• Invited talk: Southern California Security and Cryptography Workshop September 24, 2005, Irvine, CA. USA
• Invited talk: Bertinoro Invited one-week course, International PhD School on Mathematical Aspects of Modern Cryptography, Bertinoro, Italy September 4 - 9, 2005.
• Talk: "How to Search Privately on Streaming Data", DIMACS Workshop on Theft in E-Commerce: Content, Identity, and Service, Rutgers University, Piscataway, New Jersey, April 15, 2005.
• Seminar: "Survey on Private Information Retrieval", Joint RISC/Intercity Seminar on the Mathematics of Cryptology, Lorentz Center, Leiden, Netherlands, January 21, 2005.
• Talk: "Dimension-Reductions in the Hamming Cube and Its Applications", MGA Workshop II: Multiscale Geometry in Scientific Computing, IPAM, UCLA, October 23, 2004. [slides]
• Seminar: "Content-Sensitive Fingerprinting and Dimension Reduction", Monitoring Message Streams seminar, DIMACS/Rutgers University, August 29, 2002.
• Talk: "Content-Sensitive Fingerprinting and Its Applications", CCR/DIMACS Workshop on Mining Massive Data Sets and Streams: Mathematical Methods and Algorithms for Homeland Defense, Center for Communications Research, Princeton, New Jersey, June 20, 2002.
• Seminar: "Dimension Reduction in the Hamming Cube and Its Applications", Discrete Math/Theory of Computing Seminar, Rutgers University, Piscataway, New Jersey, November 27, 2001.
• Talk: "Non-Interactive and Non-Malleable Commitment and Zero-Knowledge", Workshop in Honour of Allan Borodin's 60th Birthday, Fields Institute, Toronto, Canada, June 23, 2001.
• Seminar: "Dimension Reduction in the Hamming Cube and Its Applications", Theoretical Computer Science/Discrete Math Seminar, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey, April 9, 2001.
• Seminar: "Recent Results in Private Information Retrieval", Seminars in Theoretical Computer Science, Princeton University, April 21, 2000.
• Talk: "Recent Results on Single Database Private Information Retrieval", DIMACS Workshop on Cryptography and Intractability, Rutgers University, Piscataway, New Jersey, March 20 - 22, 2000.
• Seminar: "Single Database Private Information Retrieval: A Survey", Cryptography and Information Security (CIS) Seminar, MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts, February 11, 2000.
• Talk: "Private and Secure Database Storage and Retrieval", DIMACS Research and Education Institute (DREI), Cryptography and Network Security, Rutgers University, Piscataway, New Jersey, August 7, 1997.

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Useful and Fun Links

• UCLA Zoom
• UCLA courseweb
• UCLA Benefits
• UCLA graduate division page
• UCLA PI Portal
• UCLA yellow pages
• Undergraduate advising
• Grader hours TRS system
• Dossier DB
• UCLA course grading
• UCLA Number Theory
• My Math page
• OPUS/interfolio link
• UCLA health
  
  
  
  

• My IEEE Computer Society 2017 Award
• Photos:
  • 2008, with Ivan Visconti
  • 2006, Hateratti
  • 2005, Positano tribute :)

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