The Department of Computer Science
Vote of Confidence
A prestigious €1.5M ERC Grant will enable a young cryptographer to develop the systems that make our complex digital world go round.
When Trust is Not a Plan
“We live in an age of computations,” says Dr. Eylon Yogev, a member of the Department of Computer Science and expert on cryptography. “We ask Waze to tell us the shortest route from our home to work, and Google to give us only relevant information from among its millions of returned results. Generally, when we get the answers, we trust them without thinking.” And most of the time, adds Yogev, that trust is well-placed—or at least, low-enough stakes. The problem, he explains, occurs when we can’t blindly trust the calculation. “In sectors such as finance and cyber security, trust is not enough. We need to know with verifiable and immediate certainty that the received information is correct.”
Yet in an age of AI, supercomputing, and blockchain technology, ensuring the integrity of information can be as challenging an undertaking as the computation itself. To enable the seamless verification of complex information—“information,” points out Yogev, “on which the functioning of our digital world increasingly depends”—he received a prestigious €1.5M European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant in September of last year. Awarded to promising young researchers at the beginning of their careers, the starting grant will enable Yogev to consolidate his research team with top Ph.D. students, software engineers, procure advanced computing equipment and more powerful servers, and even organize an international conference on cryptographic proof systems, a growing field engaged in developing efficient protocols for proving computational veracity.
“These systems are a delicate balancing act,” Yogev says of his proof systems. He gives an example: “If you were tasked with building the safest possible car, you could put bullet-proof material on all the windows and behind the metal body parts. But then the car would be very heavy and too slow for regular use,” he says. “It’s the same thing with verifying computations. We need to make the ‘proof’ of the computations both small enough that they don’t slow down systems, but also secure enough to provide verifiable certainty.” Fortunately, it’s not a task that requires advanced microscopy or any specialized research tools—just smart and dedicated researchers able to see a challenge through. “Which is exactly,” he concludes, what this ERC Grant will provide, and why I’m so grateful for their vote of confidence.”
Dr. Eylon Yogev and his research students
