Amit Sahai Explained

Birth Name:	Amit Sahai
Amit Sahai
Birth Place:	Thousand Oaks City, California
Nationality:	American
Field:	Computer science, cryptography
Work Institution:	Princeton University (2000-2004) UCLA (2004-)
Doctoral Advisor:	Shafi Goldwasser
Thesis Title:	Frontiers in Zero Knowledge
Thesis Year:	2000
Prizes:	Sloan Research Fellowship (2002) Fellow of ACM (2018) Held Prize of National Academy of Sciences (2022)
Doctoral Students:	Edith Elkind Brent Waters

Amit Sahai (born 1974) is an Indian-American computer scientist. He is a professor of computer science at UCLA and the director of the Center for Encrypted Functionalities.^[1]

Biography

Amit Sahai was born in 1974 in Thousand Oaks, California, to parents who hadimmigrated from India. He received a B.A. in mathematics with a computerscience minor from the University of California, Berkeley, summa cum laude, in1996.^[2] At Berkeley, Sahai was named Computing Research Association OutstandingUndergraduate of the Year, North America, and was a member of the three-personteam that won first place in the 1996 ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest.^[3]

Sahai received his Ph.D. in computer science from MIT in 2000, and joined thecomputer science faculty at Princeton University. In2004 he moved to UCLA, where he currently holds the position of professor ofcomputer science.

Research and recognition

Amit Sahai's research interests are in security and cryptography, and theoreticalcomputer science more broadly. He has published more than 100 originaltechnical research papers.

Notable contributions by Sahai include:

• Obfuscation. Sahai is a co-inventor of the first candidate general-purpose indistinguishability obfuscation schemes, with security based on a mathematical conjecture.^[4] This development generated much interest in the cryptography community and was called "a watershed moment for cryptography." Earlier, Sahai co-authored a seminal paper formalizing the notion of cryptographic obfuscation and showing that strong forms of this notion are impossible to realize.^[5]
• Functional Encryption. Sahai co-authored papers which introduced attribute-based encryption and functional encryption.^[6]
• Results on Zero-Knowledge Proofs. Sahai co-authored several important results on zero-knowledge proofs, in particular introducing the concept of concurrent zero-knowledge proofs.^[7] Sahai also co-authored the paper that introduced the MPC-in-the-head technique for using secure multi-party computation (MPC) protocols for efficient zero-knowledge proofs.^[8]
• Results on Secure Multi-Party Computation. Sahai is a co-author on many important results on MPC, including the first universally composably secure MPC protocol,^[9] the first such protocol that avoided the need for trusted set-ups (using "Angel-aided simulation")^[10] and the IPS compiler for building efficient MPC protocols.^[11] He is also a co-editor of a book on the topic.^[12]

Sahai has given a number of invited talks including the 2004 Distinguished Cryptographer LectureSeries at NTT Labs, Japan. He was named an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation ResearchFellow in 2002, received an Okawa Research Grant Award in 2007, a XeroxFoundation Faculty Award in 2010, and a Google Faculty Research Award in 2010.His research has been covered by several news agencies including the BBC WorldService.^[13]

Sahai was elected as an ACM Fellow in 2018 for "contributions to cryptography and to the development of indistinguishability obfuscation".

In 2019, he was named a Fellow of the International Association for Cryptologic Research for "fundamental contributions, including to secure computation, zero knowledge, and functional encryption, and for service to the IACR."^[14]

Sahai was named a Simons Investigator by the Simons Foundation in 2021.^[15] He was also named a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.^[16]

In 2022, he received the Michael and Shelia Held Prize from the National Academy of Sciences for “outstanding, innovative, creative, and influential research in the areas of combinatorial and discrete optimization, or related parts of computer science, such as the design and analysis of algorithms and complexity theory.”^[17]

In 2023, he received the Test of Time Award from the International Association for Cryptologic Research for his 2008 paper "Efficient Non-interactive Proof Systems for Bilinear Groups".^{[18] [19]}

He was elected as a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society in the 2024 class of fellows.^[20]

Notes and References

1. Web site: Center for Encrypted Functionalities.
2. Web site: EQuad News, Princeton University, Fall 2000, Volume 13, No. 1. 2016-03-31. https://web.archive.org/web/20151212160149/http://www.princeton.edu/engineering/eqnews/fall00/faculty1.html. 2015-12-12. dead.
3. Web site: History - ICPC 1996.
4. Book: Sanjam Garg . Craig Gentry . Shai Halevi . Mariana Raykova . Amit Sahai . Brent Waters . 2013 IEEE 54th Annual Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science . Candidate Indistinguishability Obfuscation and Functional Encryption for all Circuits . 2013 . IEEE. 40–49 . 10.1109/FOCS.2013.13. 10.1.1.672.1968. 978-0-7695-5135-7 . 15703414 .
5. Journal of the ACM . On the (im)possibility of obfuscating programs . 59 . 2 . 1–48 . April 2012 . 10.1145/2160158.2160159. Barak . Boaz . Goldreich . Oded . Impagliazzo . Russell . Rudich . Steven . Sahai . Amit . Vadhan . Salil . Yang . Ke . 10.1.1.21.6694 . 220754739 .
6. Book: Dan Boneh . Amit Sahai . Brent Waters . Theory of Cryptography . Functional Encryption: Definitions and Challenges . 2011 . Springer Berlin Heidelberg . 6597 (Lecture Notes in Computer Science) . 253–273 . 10.1007/978-3-642-19571-6_16 . Lecture Notes in Computer Science . 978-3-642-19570-9 . 9847531 .
7. Cynthia . Dwork . Moni . Naor . Amit . Sahai . Concurrent Zero Knowledge . Journal of the ACM . 51 . 6 . 851–898 . 2004 . 10.1145/1039488.1039489 . 10.1.1.43.716 . 52827731 .
8. Yuval Ishai . Eyal Kushilevitz . Rafail Ostrovsky . Amit Sahai . Zero-Knowledge Proofs from Secure Multiparty Computation . SIAM J. Comput. . 2009 . 39 . 3 . 1121–1152 . 10.1137/080725398.
9. Book: Ran Canetti . Yehuda Lindell . Rafail Ostrovsky . Amit Sahai . Proceedings of the thiry-fourth annual ACM symposium on Theory of computing . Universally composable two-party and multi-party secure computation . 2002 . 494–503 . 10.1145/509907.509980. 978-1581134957 . 10.1.1.121.4746 . 564559 .
10. Book: Manoj Prabhakaran . Amit Sahai . Proceedings of the thirty-sixth annual ACM symposium on Theory of computing . New notions of security . 2004 . 242–251 . 10.1145/1007352.1007394. 978-1581138528 . 10001022 .
11. Book: Yuval Ishai . Manoj Prabhakaran . Amit Sahai . Advances in Cryptology – CRYPTO 2008 . Founding Cryptography on Oblivious Transfer – Efficiently . 5157 . 2008 . 572–591 . 10.1007/978-3-540-85174-5_32. Lecture Notes in Computer Science . 978-3-540-85173-8 .
12. Book: Prabhakaran . Manoj . Sahai . Amit . Secure Multi-Party Computation . IOS Press . 2013. 978-1-61499-168-7.
13. Web site: Profile at Simons Institute. 9 December 2013 .
14. Web site: Amit Sahai, IACR Fellow, 2019.
15. Web site: Simons Investigators, Mathematics and Physical Sciences, 2021 .
16. Web site: Amit Sahai, UCLA Samueli School of Engineering, 2022.
17. Web site: 2022 NAS Awards Recipients Announced, 2022 .
18. Book: Advances in Cryptology – EUROCRYPT 2008 . Groth . Jens . Sahai . Amit . Efficient Non-interactive Proof Systems for Bilinear Groups . Lecture Notes in Computer Science . 2008 . 4965 . 415–432 . Springer Berlin Heidelberg . 10.1007/978-3-540-78967-3_24 . 978-3-540-78966-6 .
19. Web site: Announcing the 2023 IACR Test-of-Time Award for Eurocrypt . April 14, 2023.
20. Web site: 2024 Class of Fellows of the AMS. American Mathematical Society. 2023-11-09.