{"id":1603,"date":"2005-04-23T16:55:36","date_gmt":"2005-04-23T16:55:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/presidentreport.biu.ac.il\/2025\/?p=1603"},"modified":"2025-05-12T19:49:42","modified_gmt":"2025-05-12T19:49:42","slug":"vote-of-confidence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/presidentreport.biu.ac.il\/2025\/?p=1603","title":{"rendered":"Vote of Confidence"},"content":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A prestigious \u20ac1.5M ERC Grant will enable a young cryptographer to develop the systems that make our complex digital world go round.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1792,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-innovation","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"

The Department of Computer Science<\/h5>\n

Vote of Confidence<\/h1>\n

A prestigious \u20ac1.5M ERC Grant will enable a young cryptographer to develop the systems that make our complex digital world go round.<\/h3>\n

When Trust is Not a Plan<\/h6>
\"Dr.
Dr. Eylon Yogev<\/figcaption><\/figure>

\u201cWe live in an age of computations,\u201d says Dr. Eylon Yogev, a member of the Department of Computer Science and expert on cryptography. \u201cWe 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.\u201d And most of the time, adds Yogev, that trust is well-placed\u2014or at least, low-enough stakes. The problem, he explains, occurs when we can\u2019t blindly trust the calculation. \u201cIn 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.\u201d<\/p>


<\/p>

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\u2014\u201cinformation,\u201d points out Yogev, \u201con which the functioning of our digital world increasingly depends\u201d\u2014he received a prestigious \u20ac1.5M 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese systems are a delicate balancing act,\u201d Yogev says of his proof systems. He gives an example: \u201cIf 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,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s the same thing with verifying computations. We need to make the \u2018proof\u2019 of the computations both small enough that they don\u2019t slow down systems, but also secure enough to provide verifiable certainty.\u201d Fortunately, it\u2019s not a task that requires advanced microscopy or any specialized research tools\u2014just smart and dedicated researchers able to see a challenge through. \u201cWhich is exactly,\u201d he concludes, what this ERC Grant will provide, and why I\u2019m so grateful for their vote of confidence.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Eylon\n

Dr. Eylon Yogev and his research students<\/p>","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/presidentreport.biu.ac.il\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1603","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/presidentreport.biu.ac.il\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/presidentreport.biu.ac.il\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/presidentreport.biu.ac.il\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/presidentreport.biu.ac.il\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1603"}],"version-history":[{"count":31,"href":"https:\/\/presidentreport.biu.ac.il\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1603\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2417,"href":"https:\/\/presidentreport.biu.ac.il\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1603\/revisions\/2417"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/presidentreport.biu.ac.il\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/presidentreport.biu.ac.il\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/presidentreport.biu.ac.il\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/presidentreport.biu.ac.il\/2025\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}