Ran Raz

Ran Raz was born in 1966 in Jerusalem

Ran Raz was born on December 26, 1966, in Jerusalem, under the name Ran Mizrahi. His parents were born in the country and were of Kurdish descent, and they later changed the family name to Raz. His brother is the politician Mossi Raz.

He graduated from the Leyada high school and joined the Talpiot program. He earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics and physics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 1992 he received his Ph.D. there under Avi Wigderson and Michael Ben-Or, and then spent 2 years as a postdoctoral researcher at Princeton University.

In 1994 he joined the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science at the Weizmann Institute of Science, and he became a full professor in 2003. He made several stays at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. In 2017 he joined the School of Engineering and Applied Science at Princeton University.

His research covers interactive proof systems, probabilistically checkable proofs and the P versus NP problem. He received the Erdős Prize in 2002 and the Michael Bruno Memorial Award in 2006. Several of his papers won paper awards at theoretical computer science conferences.