From booking a flight to sending an email, everyday internet procedures rely on a security system that protects credit card numbers and addresses.
That's where computer science professor Boaz Barak comes in. A specialist in information encoding — better known as cryptography — Barak was one of two scholars with ties to the University who were awarded Packard fellowships on Tuesday. Fellowship recipients receive unrestricted grants of $625,000 to spend over five years.
The other recipient was Rutgers physicist Emil Yuzbashyan GS '04.
Barak's research is applied on an everyday basis and is the foundation of e-commerce. "For example, when you buy a book on [amazon.com], your credit card information travels through several intermediate computers, but the people controlling these computers cannot read it because it is cryptographically protected," Barak explained in an email.
Despite its seemingly commonplace uses, cryptography is a rapidly evolving science. "On the one hand, tasks that many smart people thought impossible turned out to be possible," Barak said. "On the other hand ... cryptographic schemes most people thought secure turned out to have subtle weaknesses."
Before the 1970s, most cryptographers thought it impossible to transmit data securely over an open network, Barak said. But his research, which evaluated the effectiveness of methods for obfuscating code, opened up new possibilities for internet security.
"Boaz is one of the foremost researchers in cryptography today," David Xiao GS, who works in Barak's lab, said in an email.
As a theoretical cryptographer, Barak said he is interested in making fundamental discoveries. "I think mapping out the terrain of what's possible and what's impossible is very important," he said. "At the very least, the realization that some task is possible in principle can serve as a motivation ... to finding truly efficient implementations."
That same spirit of efficiency will apply to his use of the money from the Packard fellowship. "My work is mostly done by pen and paper and in collaborations with other researchers," he said. "I don't need specialized equipment." Instead, Barak said, he plans to use most of the funds to support graduate students and postdoctoral researchers.
Yuzbashyan, who obtained his Ph.D. from the University's physics department, received the Packard fellowship for his theoretical work on the properties of gases at temperatures close to absolute zero.
His field involves some intriguing phenomena. At very low temperatures, gases exhibit unusual behavior, such as no resistance to electricity or flow. A supercooled gas can flow endlessly in a circle without any pump to maintain the motion.
Applications of Yuzbashyan's research could include devices like quantum computers, which would be much faster than current computers.
"My interest in this general field has been shaped at Princeton," Yuzbashyan said in an email, adding that he continues to collaborate with faculty and postdoctoral researchers at the University. "I enjoyed being at Princeton very much, and I learned a lot there."
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