Brown CS News

Less than a year after receiving the Levchin Prize for Real-World Cryptography and being named an Identity 25 Digital Pioneer, Brown CS faculty member Anna Lysyanskaya has received another high honor in the field of cryptography. The International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR), the leading organization responsible for peer review of cryptographic research, has elevated her to the rank of Fellow for her contributions to privacy-preserving credentials and service to the IACR. She will receive this honor at the Fellows Ceremony, which will be held at one of the IACR General Conferences to take place later this year.

Anna received her doctorate in Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2002 and has been a Brown CS faculty member ever since. A key theme of her research is balancing privacy with accountability, and she’s known for her foundational research in this area. Camenisch-Lysyanskaya signatures, which she co-created, provide the cryptographic basis for anonymous credentials, which allow users to prove that they possess required attributes without revealing any other information, such as personal identifiers. Her work has been incorporated into the Trusted Computing Group's industrial standard, served as the theoretical foundation for IBM Zurich's Idemix project, and informed the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC). On both sides of the Atlantic, governments are working on creating digital identity apps that citizens can use in order to prove their identity or identity attributes, and Anna’s work on anonymous credentials has paved the way for such apps to be privacy-preserving.

Anna has taught introductory and advanced cryptography courses that give Brown’s computer science concentrators and graduate students a rigorous foundation in the field as well as opportunities for advanced research projects. She has also developed a novel inclusive course on the basics of cryptography that’s suitable for a broad range of students without a technical computing and mathematical background. The course description states that it’s “aimed at practicing and aspiring poets, economists, software engineers, law and policy wonks, and business tycoons”.

Anna’s accomplishments and service to her profession have been well-recognized in her field. She’s been a member of the IACR Board of Directors for more than a decade, and IACR recognized her as a leading researcher by her appointment in 2023 as Program Co-Chair of its annual CRYPTO conference, the most prominent scholarly publication venue in her field. Anna has also served on the Advisory Board and Board of Directors of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), a privacy watchdog and advocacy group. 

The full list of 2025 IACR Fellows is available here.

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