Salil Vadhan is the Vicky Joseph Professor of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. He serves as Director of Graduate Studies for Computer Science and Faculty Director of the OpenDP open-source software project. Vadhan earned an A.B. summa cum laude in Mathematics and Computer Science from Harvard University in 1995, a Certificate of Advanced Study in Mathematics with Distinction from Churchill College, Cambridge University in 1996, and a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1999, where his thesis on statistical zero-knowledge proofs was advised by Shafi Goldwasser. He joined Harvard as an Assistant Professor of Computer Science in 2001, advancing to Thomas D. Cabot Associate Professor in 2004, Gordon McKay Professor in 2007, and his current Vicky Joseph Professorship in 2009. Additional appointments include Harvard College Professor from 2016 to 2021, Area Chair for Computer Science from 2017 to 2019 (co-chair from 2018), and Director of the Harvard Center for Research on Computation and Society from 2008 to 2011 and 2014 to 2015. He has held visiting positions at the Institute for Advanced Study (2000–2001), UC Berkeley as Miller Visiting Professor (2007–2008), Stanford University (2011–2012), National Chiao-Tung University (2015–2016), University of Sydney (2024), and Bocconi University (2024).

Vadhan's research in theoretical computer science centers on computational complexity, cryptography, randomness in computation, and data privacy. He leads Harvard's Privacy Tools Project as principal investigator and co-leads OpenDP. A member of Harvard's Theory of Computation group, his contributions include the 2012 monograph Pseudorandomness and highly influential papers such as 'Entropy Waves, the Zig-Zag Graph Product and New Constant-Degree Expanders' (Gödel Prize 2009, with Omer Reingold and Avi Wigderson), 'Statistically Hiding Commitments and Statistical Zero-Knowledge Arguments from any One-Way Function' (SIAM Outstanding Paper Prize 2011), and works on differential privacy earning Distinguished Paper Awards at CCS 2023 and 2024. Honors include election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2025), ACM Fellowship (2018), Simons Investigator Awards (2013–2017, 2019–present), Guggenheim Fellowship (2007–2008), ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award (2000), and multiple best paper awards at CCC, Eurocrypt, and TCC Test of Time (2024). Vadhan is Editor-in-Chief of Foundations and Trends in Theoretical Computer Science, serves on steering committees for the Symposium on Foundations of Responsible Computing and Theory of Cryptography Conference, chairs the Luca Trevisan Award, and is on the Scientific Board of the Institute of Information Science at Academia Sinica.

Professional Email: salil_vadhan@harvard.edu