This post originally appeared on the Hyperbolic Medium blog on May 7th, 2024
Raluca Ada Popa, an esteemed associate professor at UC Berkeley, is now an advisor at Hyperbolic. Co-director of RISELab and SkyLab, holding a Ph.D in computer science at MIT, Raluca’s expertise will help push the grand vision of Hyperbolic forward: providing open-access AI to everyone who needs it.
We’re excited to announce an addition to our team of advisors, Raluca Ada Popa. Raluca is well-respected for her extensive experience in security, systems, and applied cryptography and will partner with Hyperbolic’s founders to accelerate their efforts to a key blocker to decentralized AI: data privacy and confidential computing.
Prior to joining UC Berkeley, Raluca was a post-doctoral researcher at ETH Zürich in the System Security group. In 2014, she was awarded a PhD for her work in building practical systems that compute using encrypted data, which earned her a George M. Sprowls Award for best MIT CS doctoral thesis. Some of her systems have been adopted into or inspired systems such as SEEED of SAP AG, Microsoft SQL Serverʼs Always Encrypted Service, and others. She is also the co-founder and co-director of RISELab and Skylab, aiming to create a more secure intelligent system for the cloud.
Throughout her career, Raluca witnessed the critical challenges and vulnerabilities in data privacy that plague decentralized systems and is ready to apply her skillset with Hyperbolic to find a perfect solution to offer data privacy to its users.
“Raluca’s deep understanding of confidential computing is a game-changer for us. Her expertise will be instrumental in realizing our vision of Decentralized AI while ensuring data privacy [for our users in general, but more specifically for those with sensitivity to data]. We are confident that her guidance will have a significant impact on our journey. ”
Jasper Zhang • Co-Founder & CEO at Hyperbolic
To truly carry out the grand vision of decentralized AI and enable open-access AI for everyone who needs it, the node provider (of compute) must not have access to the data being inferenced, fine-tuned, or trained by the user. As one of the world’s top experts in confidential computing, Raluca is ready to tackle this challenge. Looking ahead, Raluca and Hyperbolic envision a world where AI can be both powerful and private.
“What Hyperbolic is doing to attack these issues is both impressive and exciting. I am thrilled to be working with them to bring these novel solutions to life for AI companies and researchers. Our long-term goal is to set a new standard in AI privacy, making secure decentralized systems the norm.”
Prof. Raluca Ada Popa • Associate Professor at UC Berkeley, Co-director of RISELab and SkyLab
With Raluca’s guidance, Hyperbolic is set to implement cutting-edge technologies that ensure user data privacy without compromising on performance.
Raluca has an expansive set of awards: The ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award 2021, a Sloan Research Fellowship, J. Lepreau Best Paper Award, Distinguished Paper Award, J. and D. Gray Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching of Computer Science, Microsoft Research Faculty Fellowship, NSF CAREER, Bakar Faculty Fellowship.
MIT Technology Review selected her to the list of 35 innovators under 35, and she co-founded the DARE program to promote undergraduate research opportunities in EE&CS.
We are honored to have Raluca guiding our journey towards open-access AI for everyone. Discover more about Raluca Ada Popa’s groundbreaking work by connecting with her on LinkedIn and X, and join her in shaping the future of secure, decentralized AI.
About Hyperbolic
Hyperbolic is a leading provider of decentralized AI computing and inference services, pioneering open access to AI for developers and researchers worldwide. With a mission to break down barriers that limit AI’s potential, Hyperbolic believes in a future where AI technology is universally accessible, empowering every individual and community with the tools to innovate, create, and advance our world. The Hyperbolic founding team is led by award-winning Math and AI researchers from UC Berkeley and the University of Washington.
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