Ari Juels

Juels studied at Amherst College from 1987 to 1991, earning a B.A. in Latin literature and mathematics and election to Phi Beta Kappa, and pursued a Ph.D. in computer science at the University of California, BerkeleyUniversity of California, BerkeleyThe University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) is a campus of the University of California system; the University of California was founded in 1868 through a merger of two institutions and moved to Berkeley, California, in 1873.Open the full entry, from 1991 to 1996, holding a NASANASAThe National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is the U.S. federal agency responsible for the civilian space program, aeronautics research and space science. Established by law in 1958 and headquartered in Washington, D.C., it has run programs including Mercury, the Apollo Moon landings, the Space Shuttle, the International Space Station and Artemis.Open the full entry Graduate Fellowship from 1992 to 1995.⁠[1]

Juels joined RSA Laboratories in 1996 as a research scientist, became a senior research scientist in 1998 and was a principal research scientist from 1999 to 2007; he was chief scientist of RSA Laboratories from 2007 to 2010 and its director from 2007 to 2013. From 2010 to 2013 he was chief scientist of RSA, the Security Division of EMC, and a distinguished engineer at EMC Corporation.⁠[1]

From 2005 to 2006 he was a co-founder of RavenWhite Inc.⁠[1]

In 2009 Emerald Bay Books published Tetraktys, a cryptography thriller written by Juels.⁠[2]

Juels has been a professor at Cornell Tech (Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute) since 2014 and the Weill Family Foundation and Joan and Sanford I. Weill Professor since 2019, and is on the computer science faculty of the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science. His research covers blockchains, cryptocurrency and smart contracts, applied cryptography, user authentication and privacy.⁠[1][3]

Juels is a co-founder of the Initiative for CryptoCurrencies and Contracts (IC3) and has served as its co-director since 2016.⁠[2][1]

On February 9, 2019, Andreessen HorowitzAndreessen HorowitzAndreessen Horowitz (a16z) is a venture capital firm founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. It invests from the seed stage through the growth stage and provides operational support to its portfolio companies.Open the full entry released the a16z Podcast episode “a16z Podcast: Voting, Security, and Governance in Blockchains,” in which Cornell Tech PhD student Phil Daian and a16z crypto partner Ali Yahya discussed voting in blockchains and other social systems, how on-chain voting can be gamed and what that means for cryptoeconomic security and DAO governance. The episode page notes that the discussion drew on Daian’s 2018 work on on-chain vote buying and “Dark DAOs,” co-written with Tyler Kell, Ian Miers and Juels. The episode was uploaded to the a16z YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry channel on February 26, 2019, as “a16z Podcast | Voting, Security, and Governance in Blockchains and Cryptonetworks.”⁠[4][5]

In August 2020 ChainlinkChainlink (LINK)Chainlink is a decentralized oracle and cross-chain computing platform co-founded by Sergey Nazarov and Steve Ellis. LINK supports network incentives and payments. From its 2017 whitepaper and 2019 Ethereum mainnet launch, the protocol expanded into data feeds, Proof of Reserve, Automation, VRF, CCIP, staking and the Chainlink Runtime Environment.Open the full entry acquired DECO, a privacy oracle protocol developed by IC3, for an undisclosed amount, and Juels, a co-creator of DECO, joined Chainlink Labs as chief scientist to oversee its integration. He had earlier contributed to the Chainlink white paper.⁠[6]

On February 20, 2024, Talos Press published The Oracle, a crypto thriller by Juels; a Korean edition was published by GlobalMind on May 20, 2024.⁠[2]

His honors include selection for the MIT Technology Review TR100 in 2004, the PET Award for Outstanding Research in Privacy Enhancing Technologies in 2007, the NDSS Test of Time Award in 2019 for his 1999 paper on “Client Puzzles,” the ACMAustralian Community MediaAustralian Community Media (ACM) is an Australian regional and rural news publishing group with more than 100 brands, including The Canberra Times; in 2019 Nine sold it to a company controlled by interests associated with Antony Catalano and Thorney Investment Group.Open the full entry CCS Test of Time Award in 2022 for a 2012 paper on cross-VM side channels, and a Crypto and Blockchain Economics Research (CBER) award in 2023 for the paper “Flash Boys 2.0.”⁠[1]

Personal website: https://www.arijuels.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[2]

LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ari-juels-20a58a/ (opens in a new window).⁠[2]