Primary research interests:
Foundations of Cryptography, Large Language Models.
Among my interests: Hiding Secrets in Software -- Secure Program
Obfuscation, Cryptographic Proofs and Secure Multiparty Computation.
I'm also interested in many other aspects of
computer science. See Research below.
Amit Sahai is a Professor of Computer Science and (by courtesy) Mathematics at UCLA, and the incumbent of the Symantec Endowed Chair in Computer Science. He also serves as an Advisor to the
Prison Mathematics Project.
His primary research interests are in cryptography, coding theory, complexity theory, and security.
He is the co-inventor of attribute-based encryption, functional encryption, and indistinguishability obfuscation.
He was an invited lecturer at the 2022 International Congress of Mathematicians
(ICM 2022, Special Sectional Lecture),
and received the 2022 National Academy of Sciences Held Prize for his role in the development of indistinguishability obfuscation.
His research works have been recognized by five Test of Time Awards
(STOC 2024, FOCS 2023, Eurocrypt 2023,
Eurocrypt 2020, ACM CCS 2016) and a STOC 2021 Best Paper Award.
For his teaching, he was given the 2016 Lockheed Martin Excellence in Teaching Award from the Samueli School of Engineering at UCLA.
Many years ago, he was a member of the 1996 World Champion ACM ICPC Team from UC Berkeley.
He is also a Simons Investigator (2021), Fellow of the ACM (2018),
Fellow of the IACR (2019), and Fellow of the AMS (2024).
Please see here for a list of selected honors.
My h-number (as of Jan 2025, according to Google Scholar): 91.
For my publications,
please check my
Google Scholar profile.
(An older link to Research and On-Line Papers)
Current Ph.D. Students:
Alexis Korb, Paul Lou, Riddhi Ghosal.
Graduated Ph.D. Students in Academia/Research Labs:
Brent Waters.
Now Full Professor at UT-Austin.
Manoj
Prabhakaran.
Was Associate Professor (with tenure) at UIUC.
Now Full Professor at IIT Bombay.
Edith
Elkind.
Was Full Professor at Oxford University, UK.
Now Full Professor at Northwestern.
Vipul Goyal.
Was Associate Professor at CMU.
Now Senior Scientist at NTT Research.
Omkant Pandey. Now Assistant Professor at SUNY Stony Brook.
Nishanth Chandran. Now Researcher at Microsoft Research.
Abhishek Jain. Now Associate Professor at Johns Hopkins University
and Senior Scientist at NTT Research.
Sanjam Garg. Now Associate Professor at UC Berkeley.
Ran Gelles. Now Associate Professor at Bar-Ilan
University, Israel.
Divya Gupta. Now Researcher at
Microsoft Research.
Prabhanjan
Ananth. Now
Assistant Professor
at UCSB.
Dakshita Khurana. Now Associate Professor at UIUC
and Scientist at NTT Research.
Saikrishna Badrinarayanan. Now Researcher at LinkedIn.
Aayush Jain. Now Assistant Professor at CMU.
Nathan Manohar. Now
Research Scientist at IBM T.J. Watson Research.
Rex Fernando, Now
Research Scientist at Aptos Labs.
Graduated Ph.D. Students in Industry:
Ryan Moriarty. Entrepeneur.
Hakan Seyalioglu. Now at Google.
Abishek Kumarasubramanian.
Now at Roblox.
Akshay Wadia. Now at Apple.
Vanishree
Rao, Now CEO of Fermah.
Postdocs and former Postdocs:
Eric Miles
(Fall 2014 to 2016), Now at Google.
Omkant Pandey (Fall 2014), Now Assistant Professor at SUNY Stony Brook.
Hemanta Maji
(Fall 2011 to 2015), Now Assistant Professor at Purdue.
Shweta Agrawal
(Fall 2011 to Summer 2013), Now Assistant Professor at IIT Madras.
Jens Groth (Fall 2005 to Summer 2007), Now Professor at UCL.
Boaz Barak (Summer 2004), Now Professor at Harvard.
Yuval Ishai (Spring/Summer 2002), Now Professor at Technion.
Former Ph.D. students:
Shien Ong
(graduated with Ph.D. from Harvard University)
Office hours: By appointment.
Program Committees:
I am (or have been) on the program committees for the following
conferences. Be sure to submit your best papers to these
conferences, and attend them too! Eurocrypt 2001, Innsbruck,
Austria
Complexity 2002, Montreal,
Canada
Program Chair:
RANDOM 2003, Princeton, August 24-26, 2003.
IndoCrypt 2004, Chennai, India, December 20-22, 2004.
Theory of Cryptography Conference (TCC) 2005,
Cambridge, USA, February 10-12, 2005
ICALP 2005,
Lisboa, Portugal, July 11-15, 2005
AsiaCrypt 2005, Chennai, India, December 2005.
STOC 2006
,
Seattle, WA, May 2006.
Program Chair:
IPAM Workshop on foundations of secure multi-party computation and
zero-knowledge, Los Angeles, CA, November 2006
CRYPTO 2007
, Santa Barbara, CA, August 2007.
SODA 2008, San Fransisco, January 2008.
CRYPTO 2008
, Santa Barbara, CA, August 2008.
Eurocrypt
2010, Nice, France, May/June 2010.
Theory of Cryptography Conference (TCC) 2012,
Taormina, Italy, March 18-21, 2012
Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS) 2012,
New Brunswick, New Jersey, October 20-23, 2012
Program Chair, Theory of Cryptography Conference (TCC) 2013,
Tokyo, Japan, March 3-6, 2013
CRYPTO 2014
, Santa Barbara, CA, August 2014.
Program Co-Chair, Simons Institute Workshop on Securing
Computation, Berkeley, California, June 8-12, 2015.
STOC 2017, June 19-23,
Montreal, Canada
TCC 2017, Baltimore, MD, November 2017.
Eurocrypt 2019, Darmstadt, Germany, May 2019.
Program Co-Chair, FOCS 2023.
Contact:
UCLA - Amit Sahai
Engineering VI, Lab 497, Office 497A
Department of Computer Science
UCLA, Los Angeles, CA 90095
United States of America
Phone: (310) 267-4982
FAX: (310) 825-7578
Email: last name @cs.ucla.edu Personal
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