Silvio Micali

Micali was born on October 13, 1954, in Palermo, Sicily, Italy, and holds both U.S. and Italian citizenship.⁠[1][1]

In March 1978, Micali received a Laurea in mathematics, cum laude, from the University of Rome. His early research concerned the lambda calculus: in 1978 he presented a paper on lambda-calculus strategies at the spring school of theoretical computer science in La Châtre, France, and in March 1980 he published “Minimal forms in λ-calculus computations” with C. Boehm in the Journal of Symbolic Logic.⁠[1][1][1]

Micali then went to the University of California, Berkeley, to pursue a doctorate in computer science. In 1980, he and fellow graduate student Shafi Goldwasser began collaborating; both were advised by Manuel Blum, who later received the 1995 Turing Award.⁠[2][2]

In October of the same year, he and Vijay Vazirani presented an O(E·V^1/2) algorithm for finding a maximum matching in general graphs at the FOCS conference.⁠[1]

In May 1982, Goldwasser and Micali presented “Probabilistic Encryption and How to Play Mental Poker Keeping Secret All Partial Information” at the STOC conference; the journal version, “Probabilistic Encryption,” appeared in the Journal of Computer and System Sciences in April 1984. The work grew out of the two imagining how to play poker securely over the phone: they first devised a scheme for encrypting single bits of data and ensuring their security, then proved that it could be scaled up to complex problems such as communications protocols and Internet transactions.⁠[1][1][2][2]

The paper introduced formal security definitions and proved that encryption schemes must be randomized rather than deterministic, with many possible ciphertexts corresponding to each message; it also introduced the “simulation paradigm,” which demonstrates a system’s security by showing that an adversary could have simulated all the information it obtained while using the cryptographic system. These results laid the foundation for the theory of cryptographic security, and the simulation paradigm went on to become the most widely used method of security proof in cryptography.⁠[2][2][2][2][2]

From 1982 to 1983, Micali was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto; in December 1983 he received his PhD in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley. That year he joined the MIT Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science as an assistant professor, becoming an associate professor in 1986 and receiving tenure in 1988.⁠[1][1][1][1][1][3]

In November 1984, he and Manuel Blum published “How to generate Cryptographically Strong Sequences of Pseudo-Random Bits” in the SIAM Journal on Computing, studying the generation of cryptographically strong pseudorandom bit sequences; he also obtained a U.S. patent for a pseudorandom sequence generator.⁠[1][1]

In 1985, Goldwasser, Micali, and Charles Rackoff published “The Knowledge Complexity of Interactive Proof Systems,” whose journal version appeared in the SIAM Journal on Computing in February 1989. The paper introduced “knowledge complexity,” a measure of how much “useful information” can be extracted from an interaction, and initiated the idea of “zero-knowledge” proofs: by exchanging messages back and forth and tossing coins, a prover convinces a verifier that a fact is true without the verifier gaining any additional information about why it is true.⁠[2][1][2][2][2]

By controlling the leakage of knowledge, zero-knowledge proofs provided the essential language for discussing the security of cryptographic protocols; the paper also established interactive proofs as a new method for verifying the correctness of information exchange, which beyond cryptography can be used to guarantee correctness in settings such as cloud computing.⁠[2][2][2]

At the October 1985 FOCS conference, Micali and Paul Feldman presented a paper on reaching Byzantine agreement in constant expected time, and he presented a paper on verifiable secret sharing with Benny Chor, Goldwasser, and Baruch Awerbuch; in May 1988, he and Feldman presented optimal algorithms for Byzantine agreement at the STOC conference.⁠[1][1][1]

In October 1986, Oded Goldreich, Goldwasser, and Micali published “How to Construct Random Functions” in the Journal of the ACM, giving a construction of pseudorandom functions; the three had earlier presented cryptographic applications of pseudorandom functions at CRYPTO 84.⁠[1][1]

In April 1988, Goldwasser, Micali, and Ronald Rivest published a digital signature scheme secure against adaptive chosen-message attacks in the SIAM Journal on Computing. In May of the same year, Manuel Blum, Paul Feldman, and Micali presented “Non-Interactive Zero-Knowledge And Its Applications” at the STOC conference, introducing non-interactive zero knowledge.⁠[1][1]

Micali’s other honors include membership in Italy’s Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, the TCC Test-of-Time Award, the title “Palermitano nel Mondo,” honorary degrees from the University of Salerno and La Sapienza University of Rome, the Carnegie Corporation’s “Great Immigrants: Pride of America,” the Italian Foreign Affairs Ministry’s Technology Startup Award, ISSNAF’s Lifetime Achievement Award, the Order of the Star of Italy (Ufficiale), and the award of the International Association for Trusted Blockchain Applications (INATBA) in Brussels.⁠[1][1][1][1][1][1][1][1][1][1]

He is also a Chair Professor at Tsinghua University, a Visiting Chair Professor at Peking University, and an Honorary Professor at Zhejiang University, and a member of the Strategic Steering Committee of the Trusted Blockchain Initiatives.⁠[1][1][1][1]

Micali’s research interests span cryptography, secure protocols, pseudorandom number generation, proof systems, distributed computation, zero knowledge, mechanism design, blockchains, and cryptocurrencies. Beyond cryptography, he has published papers on mechanism design and game theory (in Econometrica, the Journal of Economic Theory, and elsewhere), as well as papers on the mechanism of T4 lymphopenia in AIDS and on sparse matrices under neurobiology-based constraints (in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences).⁠[1][1][1][1][1]

His doctoral students include Bonnie Berger, Mihir Bellare, Phil Rogaway, Rafail Ostrovsky, Shai Halevi, Rosario Gennaro, Leo Reyzin, Chris Peikert, Rafael Pass, Alessandro Chiesa, and Zeyuan Allen-Zhu, among others; Oded Goldreich, Tal Rabin, and Alon Rosen did postdoctoral research under him.⁠[1][1][1][1][1][1][1][1][1][1][1][1]

Micali’s patents cover pseudorandom sequence generation, identification, digital signatures, encryption, key escrow, digital certificate issuance and revocation, simultaneous electronic transactions, anonymous transactions, and other fields, the most recent being a U.S. patent on using virtual blockchain protocols to implement a fair electronic exchange. His commercial paper “Fair Electronic Exchange with Invisible Trusted Parties” proposes protocols that achieve fair exchange through “invisible trusted parties,” applicable to fair certified e-mail and contract signing.⁠[1][1][1][1][1][1][4][5][5]

Personal website: https://people.csail.mit.edu/silvio/ (opens in a new window)⁠[6]

MIT CSAIL: Official website: https://www.csail.mit.edu/ (opens in a new window).⁠[6]

Algorand: Official website: https://algorand.co/ (opens in a new window).⁠[7]