This upcoming Wednesday, October 2nd, at 4:30 PM, the DeCenter Seminar Series continues with [ https://www.linkedin.com/in/joseph-bonneau-15419920/ | Joseph Bonneau ] , Assistant Professor of Computer Science at New York University and Research Partner at a16z crypto. He will present a seminar titled "Towards Cryptographically Verifiable Randomness." The event will take place in the Friend Center Convocation Room (113). Abstract: Public randomness has many important applications, from games and state lotteries to allocation of visas and public housing or assignment of judges to legal cases. Yet today, most of these applications provide little or no public verifiability. This talk will survey nearly ten years of work by the author on using cryptography to generate publicly verifiable randomness, including the development of verifiable delay functions and modern randomness beacon protocols based on them. It will also discuss the practical challenges in bringing these protocols into common use. Bio: Joseph Bonneau is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at New York University and a Research Partner at a16z crypto. His research focuses on applied cryptography and computer security. He earned BS and MS degrees from Stanford University and completed his PhD at the University of Cambridge, all studying computer science. Prior to joining NYU he was a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy as well as at Stanford and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. We Hope to see you there!