PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Hugo Krawczyk

Hugo Krawczyk is a cryptographer whose work spans message authentication, key exchange and secure computation. He studied mathematics at the University of Haifa and computer science at Technion, where he completed a 1990 D.Sc. thesis on pseudorandomness. He worked at IBM and Technion, became an IBM Fellow in 2017, and coauthored HMAC, SIGMA and HKDF. He served as a Principal Researcher on Algorand's founding team before joining Amazon in 2023. His 2025 encrypted matrix-vector paper described secure machine learning as an application, and as of October 2026 he is a Senior Principal Scientist at Amazon Web Services.

Now at
Amazon
Badges

Timeline

  1. 1990

    Degrees and a Technion thesis

    He earns a BA in mathematics from the University of Haifa, an MS and PhD in computer science at Technion, and studies with doctoral advisor Oded Goldreich. In 1990, he completes a D.Sc. thesis at Technion on pseudorandom distributions and the difficulty of generating them.

  2. 1992–2019

    Research at IBM and Technion

    He works in IBM's Cryptography Research group from 1992 to 1997 and from 2004 to 2019, and serves as an associate professor in Technion's Electrical Engineering Department from 1997 to 2004.

  3. 1997–2010

    HMAC, SIGMA and HKDF

    In 1997, he coauthors RFC 2104, which describes HMAC as a message authentication mechanism. In 2003, he publishes SIGMA, a signature-and-MAC approach to authenticated Diffie–Hellman for IKE protocols. In 2010, he and Pasi Eronen specify HKDF as an HMAC-based key derivation function for protocols and applications.

  4. 2017

    An IBM Fellowship

    IBM names him one of 11 new IBM Fellows in 2017 while he serves as a Distinguished Research Staff Member at IBM Research.

  5. 2019–2023

    Research at Algorand

    From 2019 to 2023, he serves as Principal Researcher at the Algorand Foundation and as part of its founding team.

  6. 2023

    Amazon and an IACR lecture

    In July 2023, he joins Amazon Web Services as a Senior Principal Scientist. The IACR selects him to present its 2023 Distinguished Lecture.

  7. 2025

    Encrypted computation for secure ML

    In 2025, he coauthors encrypted matrix-vector protocols based on secret dual codes; the authors describe them as useful for secure machine learning. In 2025, he also coauthors Gold OPRF: Post-Quantum Oblivious Power-Residue PRF, with Amazon Web Services as his affiliation.

  8. As of October 2026

    Senior Principal Scientist

    As of October 2026, he is a Senior Principal Scientist at Amazon Web Services.

Career

  1. Since 2023AmazonSenior Principal Scientist
  2. 2019–2023Algorand FoundationPrincipal Researcher
  3. From 2017IBM ResearchDistinguished Research Staff Member
  4. 1997–2004TechnionAssociate Professor
  5. 1992–2019IBM

Education

  1. 1990TechnionMS
  2. University of HaifaBA

From the biography.

  1. 23% of people shaping AI who left a university for a company later returned to a universityIncludes Hugo Krawczyk. We estimate that 468 of the 2,011 people shaping AI who left a university for a company (23%) later returned to a university after a median of 5 years, and 163 of 829 (20%) made the reverse round trip.
  2. Among employers with 30+ full-time cases, OpenAI leads primary technical role H-1B pay at $310,000, and Amazon, Google and Microsoft file 57% of all casesIncludes Amazon. Across 440,669 certified US H-1B filings from 44 employers (FY2020–FY2026), OpenAI leads primary technical role base pay at $310,000 and xAI leads overall base pay at $290,000.
  3. 20% of people at companies who shape AI also hold a university role, led by Google and Stanford UniversityIncludes Amazon. We estimate that 539 of the 6,766 people with a known current organization (8%) hold both a university role and a company role, including 20% of people at companies and 13% of people at universities.
  4. Google alumni have founded or led 133 other organizations, more than any other AI labIncludes Amazon. We estimate that alumni of 17 major AI labs went on to found or lead 350 other organizations, including 226 they founded, and we trace 472 career moves directly between 23 labs since 2010.

Colleagues

People with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

Photo: We have no published photo of Hugo Krawczyk yet. Send us a free-licensed photo.

  1. Hugo Krawczyk's D.Sc wisdom.weizmann.ac.il. Checked 21 October 2026.
  2. Hugo Krawczyk - Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  3. Recent honors and awards for Amazon scientists - Amazon Science amazon.science. Checked 21 October 2026.
  4. RFC 2104: HMAC: Keyed-Hashing for Message Authentication | RFC Editor rfc-editor.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  5. RFC 5869: HMAC-based Extract-and-Expand Key Derivation Function (HKDF) | RFC Editor rfc-editor.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  6. IBM Bestows Prestigious Technical Honor to 11 New Fellows uk.newsroom.ibm.com. Checked 21 October 2026.
  7. Encrypted Matrix-Vector Products from Secret Dual Codes - Technion - Israel Institute of Technology cris.technion.ac.il. Checked 21 October 2026.
  8. IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy 2025 ieee-security.org. Checked 21 October 2026.
  9. Hugo Krawczyk - Amazon Science amazon.science. Checked 21 October 2026.