PeopleofSuperintelligence

Researcher

Rafail Ostrovsky

Also known as Rafi Ostrovsky

Rafail Ostrovsky is a cryptographer at UCLA whose work on oblivious RAM, private information retrieval and garbled circuits bears on cloud security and privacy-preserving computation on sensitive data. After studying mathematics at Buffalo and computer science at Boston University, he earned a Ph.D. at MIT in 1992 under Silvio Micali, with a thesis that gave the first poly-logarithmic solution for Oblivious RAM. In 1997, he helped introduce the first single-server private information retrieval scheme and showed approximate nearest-neighbor search for high-dimensional data. He joined UCLA in 2003, received the IEEE Computer Society's Technical Achievement Award in 2017 and its McDowell Award in 2022, and shared the 2018 RSA Conference Award for Excellence in Mathematics. He is a distinguished professor of computer science and mathematics at UCLA, holds the Friedmann Chair in the Knowledge Sciences, and described autonomous “secure agents” in a 2025 lecture at the University of Oxford.

Born
1963
Badges

Years link to their sources.

Timeline

  1. 1984–1992

    Buffalo, Boston and MIT

    He earns a B.A. in mathematics at the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1984 and an M.S. in computer science at Boston University in 1987. At MIT, he completes a Ph.D. in 1992 under Silvio Micali, supported by an IBM Graduate Fellowship.

  2. 1990s

    Oblivious RAM and private retrieval

    His MIT thesis, Software Protection and Simulation on Oblivious RAM, gives the first poly-logarithmic solution for Oblivious RAM, which hides which data a program accesses in remote memory or cloud storage. In 1997, he helps introduce the first single-server private information retrieval scheme and shows approximate nearest-neighbor search for high-dimensional data with polynomial time and size.

  3. 2003

    Professor at UCLA

    He joins UCLA in 2003 as a full tenured professor, coming from Bell Communications Research, where he was a senior research scientist after an NSF Mathematical Sciences postdoctoral fellowship at UC Berkeley. At UCLA, he heads the Center for Information and Computation Security, a multi-disciplinary research center.

  4. 2017

    A Technical Achievement Award

    The IEEE Computer Society names him a recipient of its 2017 Technical Achievement Award for outstanding contributions to cryptographic protocols and systems. His work includes the first papers defining searchable encryption, which allows data in the cloud to be processed in encrypted form.

  5. 2018–2019

    RSA award and Academia Europaea

    He shares the 2018 RSA Conference Award for Excellence in Mathematics with Ran Canetti for work on novel models and protocol notions for secure computation tasks. In 2019, he becomes a foreign member of Academia Europaea.

  6. 2021–2022

    Fellowships and the McDowell Award

    In 2021, he is elected a fellow of the ACM, for contributions to the foundations of cryptography, and of the AAAS, and he receives a J.P. Morgan AI Research Award. In 2022, the IEEE Computer Society gives him the W. Wallace McDowell Award for contributions to computer security theory and practice.

  7. 2025

    Strachey Lecture on secure agents

    In October 2025, he delivers the Strachey Lecture at the University of Oxford, “Advances in Garbled Circuits”, which traces secure computation from Yao's garbled circuits to Garbled RAM research for privacy-preserving computation across isolated or sensitive datasets. He describes “secure agents”, autonomous computational entities designed to replace data lakes and clean-room workflows. In summer 2025, he is also a visiting scientist in a Simons Institute program on cryptography, obfuscation, proof systems and secure computation.

  8. As of October 2026

    Friedmann Chair at UCLA

    He is a distinguished professor of computer science and mathematics at UCLA and holds the Norman E. Friedmann Chair in the Knowledge Sciences, an endowed chair that supports research in knowledge sciences and allied fields such as artificial intelligence. UCLA Samueli appoints him to the chair in July 2022.

Career

  1. Since 2003University of California, Los AngelesFull tenured professor, Norman E. Friedmann Chair in the Knowledge Sciences
  2. 2025University of California, BerkeleyPostdoctoral fellow, Visiting scientist
  3. Bell Communications ResearchSenior research scientist

Education

  1. 1992Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyPhD
  2. 1987Boston UniversityM.S. in computer science
  3. 1984University at Buffalo, State University of New YorkB.A. in mathematics

From the biography.

  1. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other universityIncludes University of California, Los Angeles. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology trained or employed 44 of the 187 AI major-prize winners, more than any other university. We compare doctorate and 5+ year employment links, career timing and current workplaces for 187 major-prize and 1,111 best-paper winners.
  2. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labsIncludes University of California, Los Angeles. The median h-index is 48 at universities and 14 at frontier AI labs. We compare publishing careers, recent citations, dual appointments and job moves across 2,420 university researchers and 308 frontier-lab researchers.
  3. Universities keep AI researchers for a median of 6 years, compared with 2 years at frontier labsIncludes University of California, Los Angeles. Across 15,811 dated work stays (6,529 people), median role tenure runs from 6 years at universities to 2 years at frontier labs. We compare all five organization types, starting decades from the 1970s to the 2020s, and the organizations that keep people longest.
  4. People shaping AI work at a median of 3 organizations over a career: 3 for university starters and institute and lab starters, versus 2 for company startersIncludes University of California, Los Angeles. Across 6,853 people shaping AI with a dated work role, we estimate a median of 3 parent organizations over a career (mean 3.6), comparing role groups, starting sectors and starting decades from the 1950s to 2020–2026.

Colleagues

People named in this biography, and people with dated positions at the same organization in the same years.

Sources and credits

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

  1. Computer Science Professor: Rafail Ostrovsky Receives the IEEE Computer Society Technical Achievement Award cs.ucla.edu. Checked 22 October 2026.
  2. Rafail Ostrovsky - Biography (Academia Europaea) ae-info.org. Checked 22 October 2026.
  3. Rafail Ostrovsky - Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org. Checked 22 October 2026.
  4. Ostrovsky Receives Award at RSA Conference - IPAM ipam.ucla.edu. Checked 22 October 2026.
  5. Professor Rafail Ostrovsky Awarded 2018 RSA Conference Award for Excellence in Mathematics cs.ucla.edu. Checked 22 October 2026.
  6. Rafail Ostrovsky | UCLA Samueli School Of Engineering samueli.ucla.edu. Checked 22 October 2026.
  7. UCLA Computer Scientist Receives Major Award for Contributions to Cyber Security samueli.ucla.edu. Checked 22 October 2026.
  8. Professor Rafail Ostrovsky Delivers Strachey Lecture at University of Oxford cs.ucla.edu. Checked 22 October 2026.
  9. Rafi Ostrovsky - Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing simons.berkeley.edu. Checked 22 October 2026.
  10. UCLA Professor Rafail Ostrovsky Appointed Norman E. Friedmann Chair in the Knowledge Sciences samueli.ucla.edu. Checked 22 October 2026.