PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Boaz Barak

Also known as בועז ברק

Boaz Barak is a Harvard computer scientist who joined OpenAI's alignment team in January 2024 and is a co-author of Deliberative Alignment. He earned a PhD at the Weizmann Institute of Science in 2004, and the ACM named him a Fellow in 2022 for work in cryptography and computational complexity. A 2023 NeurIPS paper he co-wrote, Scaling Data-Constrained Language Models, earned an Outstanding Main Track Runner-Up award. Since 2025 he has split his time between OpenAI and Harvard, where he is a part-time Catalyst Professor.

Timeline

  1. 2004

    A Weizmann PhD in cryptography

    At the Weizmann Institute of Science, he receives a PhD in 2004 for a thesis on non-black-box techniques in cryptography, supervised by Oded Goldreich.

  2. 2005–2011

    An assistant professorship at Princeton

    He joins Princeton's computer science department as an assistant professor in 2005. He becomes an associate professor there in 2010 and holds that post until 2011.

  3. 2010–2016

    Research at Microsoft New England

    From 2010 to 2016, he works as a researcher at Microsoft's New England research laboratory.

  4. 2016

    The SIAM Outstanding Paper Prize

    In 2016 he shares the SIAM Outstanding Paper Prize with Mark Braverman, Xi Chen and Anup Rao, for their 2013 paper “How to Compress Interactive Communication”.

  5. 2022

    Named an ACM Fellow

    In 2022 he is named to the ACM Fellows class for contributions to theoretical computer science, in particular cryptography and computational complexity.

  6. 2023

    A NeurIPS runner-up award

    NeurIPS 2023 names two outstanding main track runner-ups, one of them Scaling Data-Constrained Language Models, which Boaz Barak co-wrote.

  7. 2024

    Alignment work at OpenAI

    In January 2024 he joins OpenAI's alignment team, and he is a co-author of Deliberative Alignment.

  8. Since 2025

    Full-time OpenAI, part-time Harvard

    In 2025 he gives up his tenured professorship in computer science at Harvard to work full-time at OpenAI. From fall 2025 he divides his time between OpenAI and Harvard, where he is a part-time Catalyst Professor.

Sources and credits

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  1. Boaz Barak - Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org. Checked 14 October 2026.
  2. UW CSE’s Anup Rao wins 2016 SIAM Outstanding Paper Prize news.cs.washington.edu. Checked 14 October 2026.
  3. #NeurIPS2023 outstanding papers - ΑΙhub aihub.org. Checked 14 October 2026.
  4. [2305.16264] Scaling Data-Constrained Language Models arxiv.org. Checked 14 October 2026.
  5. [2412.16339] Deliberative Alignment: Reasoning Enables Safer Language Models arxiv.org. Checked 14 October 2026.
  6. Harvard’s Computer Science Faculty Keep Heading to Industry. SEAS is Trying to Keep a Foot in Both Worlds. thecrimson.com. Checked 14 October 2026.
  7. Boaz Barak boazbarak.org. Checked 14 October 2026.