Eli Ben-Sasson

CAREER

• Ben-Sasson is a co-inventor of the STARK, FRI, and Zerocash protocols.
• He has held research positions at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, Harvard, and MIT.
• Most recently, he was a Professor of Computer Science at Technion, which he left to co-found StarkWare.
  

RESEARCH AND INTERESTS

• Ben-Sasson is interested in understanding the intrinsic mathematical structure that leads to hard computational problems. 
• His previous work focused on identifying combinatorial properties that lead to hard problems in different contexts of theoretical computer science, such as propositional proof complexity, algorithms for intractable (NP-complete) problems, and property testing. 
• He continues to participate in the continuing investigation of the interplay between randomness and computation, which lays the foundations for modern cryptography.
• He plays a fundamental role in the design of algorithms and computational complexity at large.

CURRENT APPOINTMENTS

• Chairman of the Board of Director at StarkWare
• Founding Scientist of the Zcash Company
• Member of a Special Computer Science Group at Harvard Radcliffe Institute

EDUCATION

• Ben-Sasson received his BSc and PhD in Computer Science from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. 
• He was an Amirin Scholar during his undergraduate studies.
• During his graduate studies, he spent two academic years at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, one of them as a participant in the special year on theoretical computer science. 
• He won the Sire Charles Clore Fellowship for excellence in the natural sciences during his graduate studies.
  
• He received the Dr. Shlomiuk Award from the Hebrew University for outstanding PhD research.

MEDIA AND APPEARANCES

• Ben-Sasson has appeared as a guest on Real Vision.