René Peralta

Research Scientist of Computer Science

B.A., (Economics and Mathematics) Hamilton College, 1978
M.A., SUNY Binghamton, 1980
Ph.D., U.C. Berkeley, 1985
Joined Yale Faculty 1999
Personal Homepage

Office Location: AKW 413
Telephone: 203.432.1245

Professor Peralta is interested in cryptology, security, and electronic commerce. Cryptographic protocols, when properly designed and implemented, are able to ensure reliability, confidentiality, and authenticity of communications. However, electronic commerce requires much more than these basic services. We are faced with the challenging task of defining the way transactions are done in a totally new environment. Over the Internet, making purchases and payments, signing contracts, holding multiparty negotiations, granting or denying access to data, protecting the privacy of consumers, implementing forms of social iteration (e.g. elections, forums), etc. are problems whose solutions require complex protocols. As of 2001, Peralta's research in this area is funded by an ITR grant.

Representative Publications
	“Short Non-interactive Cryptographic Proofs,” with J. Boyar and I. Damgaard, Journal of Cryptology, 13:449-472, 2000.
	“Subquadratic Zero-Knowledge,” with J. Boyar and G. Brassard, JACM, 42(6):169-1193, 1995.
	“Simple Constructions of Almost k-wise Independent Random Variables,” with N. Alon, O. Goldreich, and J. Hastad, Random Structures and Algorithms, 3(3), 1992.