Moni Naor

Moni Naor is a professor of computer science who explores the foundations of computer science, particularly cryptography and its links to the theory of complexity. He studied computer science at the Technion and received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, under the supervision of Professor Manuel Blum. Naor was a researcher at IBM’s Almaden Research Center for four years, and then joined the Weizmann Institute faculty in 1993. He is the incumbent of the Judith Kleeman Professorial Chair. He has also been a visiting professor at Stanford and Princeton.

Professor Naor suggested notions such as "Non-malleable Cryptography," "Traitor Tracing," "Untraceable Electronic Cash," and "Proofs of Work" to combat spam and other abuse. These early works conceived some of the fundamental concepts that are at the heart of today's digital coins. His research topics include methods that make it possible to share information while safeguarding privacy, such as releasing private information (i.e. health records) to a trusted curator for data analysis while simultaneously protecting the privacy of the individual contributors.

His prizes and honors include the Gödel Prize by the Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on Algorithms and Computation Theory (ACM/SIGACT) (2014), the Paris Kanellakis Award of the ACM’s (2016), and the Alberto O. Mendelzon Test-of-Time Award (2011). Professor Naor is also a Fellow of the International Association of Cryptologic Research.