July 19, 2021
The award was made by VMware Research to support Charalampos Papamanthou’s research on authenticated data structures and SNARKs (Succinct Non-Interactive Arguments of Knowledge) for his first three years at Yale.
Authenticated data structures are cryptographic objects that allow an untrusted server hosting a data structure or database to provide evidence that the data structure is working correctly. SNARKs enable proving more general computations via cryptographic proofs while at the same time ensuring that verifying these proofs is much faster than executing the computation from scratch. The award will further enhance the collaboration of his group with VMware research.