PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Jonathan Katz

Also known as Jonathan I. Katz

Jonathan Katz is a senior staff research scientist at Google, where his interests include cryptography, differential privacy, and distributed protocols. He completed a computer science PhD at Columbia before joining the University of Maryland in 2002, after working as a research scientist at Telcordia Technologies. At Maryland, he directed the Maryland Cybersecurity Center from October 2013, received the Humboldt Award in 2015, and became an IACR Fellow in 2019 and ACM Fellow in 2021. In 2023, he coauthored “A Watermark for Large Language Models,” an ICML Outstanding Paper that embeds algorithmically detectable signals in generated text. In September 2023, he presented Dfns distributed key-generation work at a NIST workshop; in May 2026, he contributed to Google Research's work on private analytics.

Now at
Google
Works
515
Citations
27,929
h-index
85

Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 15 October 2026.

Timeline

  1. 2002

    A PhD and research post

    He completes a computer science PhD at Columbia and joins the University of Maryland's CS department in 2002 after working as a research scientist at Telcordia Technologies.

  2. October 2013

    Directing the cybersecurity center

    He begins directing the Maryland Cybersecurity Center in October 2013.

  3. 2015

    A Humboldt research award

    He receives a Humboldt Award in 2015 to support a long-term research project with collaborators at Saarland University.

  4. 2019–2021

    Two cryptography fellowships

    He becomes an IACR Fellow in 2019. In 2021, he becomes an ACM Fellow for contributions to cryptographic protocol design and cryptography education.

  5. 2023

    Watermarking large language models

    He coauthors “A Watermark for Large Language Models,” which receives an ICML Outstanding Paper Award in 2023. Its watermark embeds signals into generated text that an algorithm can detect without access to the model's API or parameters.

  6. September 2023

    Distributed key generation at Dfns

    He presents work on distributed key generation in the discrete-logarithm setting as a Dfns speaker at a NIST workshop in September 2023.

  7. 2023–2026

    Google research on private analytics

    He joins Google as a senior staff research scientist in 2023 and is in that role in October 2026. In May 2026, he contributes to a Google Research post on private analytics that combines secure aggregation with trusted execution environments; his research interests include cryptography, differential privacy, and distributed protocols.

Sources and credits

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  1. Professor Jonathan Katz recipient of Humboldt Award cs.umd.edu. Checked 15 October 2026.
  2. Katz Named ACM Fellow eng.umd.edu. Checked 15 October 2026.
  3. Katz Named IACR Fellow umiacs.umd.edu. Checked 15 October 2026.
  4. 2023 Awards icml.cc. Checked 15 October 2026.
  5. A Watermark for Large Language Models proceedings.mlr.press. Checked 15 October 2026.
  6. Distributed Key Generation in the Discrete-Logarithm Setting csrc.nist.gov. Checked 15 October 2026.
  7. Jonathan Katz research.google. Checked 15 October 2026.
  8. Private analytics via zero-trust aggregation research.google. Checked 15 October 2026.