The Niskayuna Hall of Fame Selection Committee is pleased to announce that Dr. Ronald Rivest, Niskayuna High School Class of 1965, is the 2006 Hall of Fame inductee.
Dr. Rivest will be honored at Niskayuna High School's commencement ceremony at 7 p.m. on June 22 at Proctor's Theater. The Hall of Fame — located at the main entrance of Niskayuna High School and founded in 1983 — recognizes Niskayuna graduates who have made significant contributions to their professions or communities.
Dr. Rivest is the Viterbi Professor of Computer Science in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. He is internationally known for his part in inventing the RSA algorithm for data encryption. This method of public key encryption has become the foundation for a generation of technology security products that protect confidential data transmitted via the Internet. In 2002, he and his partners received an ACM Turing Award – considered the "Nobel Prize" for computer science – for this phenomenal contribution to network security.
Dr. Rivest founded MIT's Cryptography and Information Security Group, and has published numerous papers about cryptographic design and analysis. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Sciences, as well as a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery. In 2005, Dr. Rivest received the MITX Lifetime Achievement Award.
Dr. Rivest earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Yale University in 1969 and a doctorate in computer science from Stanford University in 1974. He also received an honorary degree (the "laurea honoris causa") from the University of Rome.

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