SUNNYVALE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--NTT Research, Inc., a division of NTT (TYO:9432), today announced that it has named Dr. Sanjam Garg a Senior Scientist in its Cryptography & Information Security (CIS) Lab. Dr. Garg is an Associate Professor in the department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Garg received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 2013. His research has been recognized with best paper awards at Eurocrypt 2013, Crypto 2017 and Eurocrypt 2018. Five of his co-authored papers have been recognized as journal-invited papers, most recently “Candidate iO [indistinguishability obfuscation] from Homomorphic Encryption Schemes,” at Eurocrypt 2020.
Dr. Garg is the author or co-author of more than 80 papers. In addition to iO and homomorphic encryption, recently addressed topics include multiparty computing (MPC), functional encryption, the ‘right to be forgotten,’ identity-based encryption (IBE), non-interactive zero-knowledge (NIZK) proofs and fully-homomorphic encryption. Dr. Garg’s interests include cryptographic foundations, in particular the challenge of realizing far-reaching cryptographic primitives while also minimizing the computational hardness assumptions used in the process. He has also been working on the design of new cryptographic constructions that support demanding application settings, such as the emerging paradigm of laconic cryptography, which enables accomplishing cryptographic tasks with minimal communication costs.
“Over the past ten years, Dr. Garg has done great work, often working in tandem with computer scientists who are now members of the CIS Lab,” said CIS Lab Director, Tatsuaki Okamoto. “We are anticipating a high level of activity from him in many areas of research going forward as a member of our team.”
Dr. Garg has previously collaborated with several CIS Lab members, including Drs. Vipul Goyal, Justin Holmgren, Susumu Kiyoshima, Brent Waters, Daniel Wichs and Mark Zhandry. This work has resulted in papers addressing a range of topics, including computation protocols that remain secure in sophisticated application scenarios; new constructions of iO and functional encryption schemes; and foundational issues in cryptography.
“In the past, I have been fortunate to work with a several members of the CIS Lab,” said Dr. Garg. “The CIS Lab has an established record of working on foundational problems in cryptography with which my own research is closely aligned. I look forward to further strengthening these collaborations.”
Before joining the UC Berkeley faculty in 2014, Dr. Garg was a Josef Raviv Memorial Post-doctoral Fellow at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center. His dissertation advisors at UCLA were Professor Rafail Ostrovsky and Professor Amit Sahai, with whom he has co-authored numerous papers. He received his B.Tech from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi, in 2008. Dr. Garg received the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellowship and the IIT Delhi Graduates of the Last Decade Award in 2020; the Hellman Family Faculty Fund Award in 2018; the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) Young Investigator Research Program (YIP) Award in 2017; and the Okawa Research Grant Award in 2016. Dr. Garg was named to the Forbes magazine “30 Under 30” list of globally influential people changing science in 2016. He received the National Science Foundation (NSF) Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Research Initiation Initiative (CRII) Award in 2015 and the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Doctoral Dissertation Award in 2013.
In addition to recruiting some of the world’s top computer scientists, the CIS Lab actively explores opportunities to work with other experts in the fields of cryptography and blockchain. It has reached joint research agreements with Stanford, UCLA and Georgetown. In late 2019, it entered an industrial partnership with the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing at UC Berkeley. CIS Lab Director Okamoto has made extensive contributions to the field of cryptography himself, including service as director of the International Association of Cryptology Research (IACR) and work on public-key encryption, protocols for electronic money and voting, and the zero-knowledge proof.
About NTT Research
NTT Research opened its offices in July 2019 as a new Silicon Valley startup to conduct basic research and advance technologies that promote positive change for humankind. Currently, three labs are housed at NTT Research facilities in Sunnyvale: The Physics and Informatics (PHI) Lab, the Cryptography and Information Security (CIS) Lab, and the Medical and Health Informatics (MEI) Lab. The organization aims to upgrade reality in three areas: 1) quantum information, neuroscience and photonics; 2) cryptographic and information security; and 3) medical and health informatics. NTT Research is part of NTT, a global technology and business solutions provider with an annual R&D budget of $3.6 billion.
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