Brown CS News

Brown University’s Department of Computer Science (Brown CS) is pleased to announce a new endowed lecture series in honor of An Wang Professor Emeritus of Computer Science Franco Preparata, an esteemed member of the Brown CS faculty who retired a decade ago. To be held annually, this year on October 10, the Franco Preparata Distinguished Lecture Series brings prominent scientists to Brown to address timely research in theoretical computer science, an area of particular interest to Franco. This year’s lecture (“From Consensus To Agreement”) was delivered by Silvio Micali, Ford Foundation Professor of Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and founder of Algorand Technologies. Silvio is a renowned cryptographer and recipient of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)’s Turing Award.

“Brown CS is thrilled to announce an annual lecture series to honor Franco Preparata, who made pioneering contributions to multiple areas of computer science and engineering, including coding theory, parallel computation, computational geometry, and computational biology,” says Roberto Tamassia, James A. and Julie N. Brown Professor of Computer Science, Department Chair of Brown CS, and proud PhD alum of Franco’s from the time that Franco was a faculty member at the University of Illinois in the 80s. “An endowment was established to offer the Franco Preparata Distinguished Lecture Series in perpetuity, celebrating Franco’s profound and long-lasting legacy of innovative computer science research and education at Brown.”  

Franco’s career spans seven countries and more than a half-century, including twenty-three years with Brown alone. It includes the publication of three books that have been translated into five languages, more than two hundred papers, and seminal contributions to coding theory, computational geometry, design and analysis of algorithms, parallel computing, very-large-scale integration (VLSI) computation, and computational biology. Franco is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the ACM, and the Japan Society for the Advancement of Science. He’s a recipient of the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society’s Darlington Prize and the “Laurea honoris causa” in Information Engineering from the University of Padova, Italy. He served on the editorial boards of six premier journals in theoretical computer science.

Silvio Micali received his Laurea in Mathematics from the Sapienza University of Rome and his PhD in Computer Science from the University of California at Berkeley. Since 1983, he has been on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty in the Engineering and Computer Science Department, where he is Ford Foundation Professor of Engineering. Silvio’s research interests are in Theory of Computation, Cryptography, Blockchains, Secure Protocols, and Mechanism Design. He is the recipient of the Turing Award for Computer Science, the Gödel Prize for Theoretical Computer Science, and the RSA prize for Cryptography. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and Accademia dei Lincei. He is also the founder of Algorand Technologies, a secure and decentralized high-performance blockchain provider.

In his opening remarks, Roberto recalled Franco’s seminal contributions to multiple areas of computer science and engineering. He expressed his gratitude to Franco as an inspirational mentor and advisor and thanked Franco and his wife, Rosa Maria, for being wonderful friends. Franco, speaking via videoconference, returned Roberto’s warm regards and spoke vividly of his early days at Brown, when computer science was competing for attention and resources with more established disciplines. “Silvio Micali,” he said, “is one of the few individuals who have punctuated the evolution of the field.” The sentiment was echoed by Brown CS faculty member Maurice Herlihy, who turned the microphone over to Silvio, describing him as someone “surrounded by stories” and whose accolades were too long to list.

Taking the stage, Silvio thanked Franco for being an academic and personal role model, someone who had led a life devoted to science while cultivating his rich cultural heritage. “Franco is amazingly able,” he said, “to combine research and fun…When the going gets tough, it’s fun that gets you going. Thank you, and congratulations to you and Brown!”

In his talk, Silvio began by recalling Byzantine agreement, a classic subject in distributed computing, noting that it “offers a meaningful and coherent view of the world in the presence of adversaries”, which is invaluable: “The best way to model a system complex enough and lasting long enough is modeling it adversarially.” 

Next, Silvio examined a new application for Byzantine agreement, the blockchain, which he defined as a database that is readable by all, writable by all, and alterable by no one. Unfortunately, he said, some blockchain proponents have created a tremendous gap between aspiration and technology, filled with utopian imagery and rhetorical flourishes, hiding the intrinsic limitations of Byzantine agreement and failing to acknowledge distinctions between communication and common knowledge and between consensus and agreement.

Finally, Silvio presented a novel solution for Byzantine agreement in the blockchain setting based on cryptographic methods that dramatically improves efficiency.

“Never give up hope,” Silvio said. “If something is elegant, it’s going to matter,” stressing that distributed computation matters, Byzantine agreement matters, adversarial analysis works, and interdisciplinarity and probabilistic approaches win.

Silvio addressed students directly at various moments in his lecture, and he turned to them again at its conclusion with an exhortation to combine rigor and fun: “Long Live Science!!! Enjoy it.”  (The three exclamation points are his.)

A recording is available (Brown login required) here.

For more information, click the link that follows to contact Brown CS Communications Manager Jesse C. Polhemus.