Tamir Tassa
Tamir Tassa (born July 5, 1964; ) is an Israeli computer scientist and full Professor in the Department Of Mathematics and Computer Science at the Open University of Israel. His research interests include cryptography, data privacy, and theoretical computer science.
Education
Tassa studied for a combined Bachelor's degree in applied mathematics and computer science at Tel Aviv University, graduating with highest honors in 1984. He continued at Tel Aviv University for a Master's degree in applied mathematics under the supervision of Eitan Tadmor, which he completed with highest honors in 1987. His master's thesis was titled Applications of compensated compactness to scalar hyperbolic conservation laws. He completed his Ph.D. in 1993, also under the supervision of Tadmor. His doctoral dissertation was titled One-sided Lipschitz stability and its applications for nonlinear conservation laws.-
Carer
From 1993 to 1996, Tassa was an assistant professor in the Department of Mathematics at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).
After returning to Israel, he worked in the high-tech industry, including positions at Algorithmic Research (later DocuSign) and BigBand.
In 2003, he joined the Department of Computer Science at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. In parallel, he joined the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at the Open University of Israel. From 2006 to 2009, he served as head of the Department of Computer Science.
From 2008 to 2019, Tassa led the annual Israeli CS Theory Day, held at the Open University of Israel. The event brought together researchers in theoretical computer science from Israel and abroad, including several Turing Award laureates.
Over the years, he has also taught at Tel Aviv University, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Reichman University, and the Academic College of Tel Aviv-Yafo. He has also been a visiting professor at Université de Lorraine in Metz and at the Faculty of Engineering at Tel Aviv University, and a research associate at the Institute for Computer Applications in Science and Engineering (ICASE) at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Virginia.
Research
Tassa's research spans several areas in theoretical computer science, cryptography, and data privacy. His early work focused on mathematical analysis, particularly nonlinear partial differential equations, including Hyperbolic conservation laws, degenerate parabolic equations, and homogenization theory.
He later worked in combinatorial optimization, contributing to approximation algorithms for computationally hard problems, as well as scheduling and Assignment problem. His research in cryptography includes topics such as secret sharing, traitor tracing, broadcast encryption, and digital watermarking.
Subsequently, his research shifted toward data privacy and privacy-preserving data analysis, including anonymization of databases and social networks, differential privacy, and methods for publishing data while balancing utility and privacy.
In recent years, his work has focused on secure multiparty computation and its applications. His research includes the design of protocols and algorithms for privacy-preserving computation in distributed settings, with applications in distributed constraint optimization, recommender systems, social network analysis, electronic voting, and fair division. His work integrates methods from cryptography, artificial intelligence, and data science.