Raluca Ada Popa came to Berkeley in 2015 from MIT. She is Robert E. and Beverly A. Brooks Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences. She co-founded the RISE(link is external) (Real-Time Intelligence with Secure Execution) Lab and is a co-founder and the CTO of PreVeil(link is external), a security start-up based on her research.

“I believe that society is losing a significant opportunity because many healthcare or financial organizations cannot share sensitive data; if they could share it, they could conduct better medical or financial studies over the aggregate data.” 

Research Focus: Security, systems, and applied cryptography

How is this research applied in the world? 

One example: Developing systems that enable hospitals to work together on disease outbreak prediction or better treatments without disclosing private data, or that enable banks to detect fraud or money laundering without sharing their sensitive data.

Why is this area important to you?

I believe that society is losing a significant opportunity because many healthcare or financial organizations cannot share sensitive data; if they could share it, they could conduct better medical or financial studies over the aggregate data.