Somesh is extremely passionate about crypto. He does well at making lectures engaging and understandable. He is very helpful outside of class as well, and he usually does not move on until the class understands a topic. The exams/quizzes are difficult, but if you study and understand the materials, they're not too bad and the graders are generous.

Somesh was one of the best professors I have had in the CS department. He is funny, engaging, and helps guide students to find solutions to the homework easily, without just doing the work himself. He introduced lots of tricks and ideas to help make difficult subject matter easy to understand, and made sure the class still had fun.

6 homework assignments, one 100% for turning in your name,lowest dropped so it was graded on 5 homeworks+free 100%, 2 midterms and a final. Low maintenance, so good to take with hard classes but the exams were kinda impossible unless you memorize every word of each topic. The final was a trick, it was weird math and didn't include half the topics.

Somesh is one of the best professors I have had for a while. He is very engaging with the class, and makes very complex ideas around crypto easy to understand. He gives plenty of time for homework (with there only being 7*) and assigns them only when discussed in lecture, Overall, a very nice guy who loves the material and wants you to love it too.

Easily the best professor I've ever had. He's engaging and attempts to learn all students' names even in classes with over 100 people. He's both funny and incredibly knowledgeable. Made CS 435 my favorite class I've ever taken and inspired me to go into the software security field.

This is one of the professor that expects so much from their students. During COVID-19, he posted lectures and homework. The office hours were not considerate of international students, and grading is vague. He says it is ok to ask questions, but he will think you are stupid for asking one. If you are used to being frustrated, i won't stop you

I took into to crypto with him this semester and thought he was a wonderful professor! Exams were pretty manageable and were from lecture topics, make sure to read the book and watch all the lectures. I found that a lot of the quiz answers can be found from watching lec and taking notes. Exams were open note/book. Make sure to do the readings!!

Sense of humor and a good person in general. Exam Review sessions directly relate to exam content, and I found the exams manageable if you studied/attended the review sessions.

I don't know if this is just because he's adapting to teaching online, but taking this class with Jha has been the worst experience of my career as a Math/CS major. He doesn't have a syllabus, makes up policies on the fly, and doesn't communicate class expectations at all. I will take away zero knowledge from his class.

He is good in research, and the face-to-face lecture quality is above average, but when it turns to online, he skip classes for two weeks and I think the online lecture is not clear, he is a good guy, but just not get used to teach online due to COVID. He will never teach online again, as long as is face-to-face, he is a good prof.

Somesh is a wildcard. On one hand, he will cancel lectures for a conference or give a hint for a HW; but on the otherhand, he taught all of public key crypto in the final week of school. I didn't even know how elliptic curves played into things, despite other professors spending ample more time on it. I learned, but logistics were always crazy.

Great professor. While the class was a bit disorganized (no set dates for exams or hw), he still made cryptography interesting and the lectures were entertaining. The lectures followed the textbook pretty closely which was helpful if you didn't understand something in lecture. Would recommend.

Prof Jha is so awesome. I didn't go into Crypto thinking I'd be any good. But he makes math interesting. He's so pleasant in lectures and has amazing handwriting lol and explains things SO CLEARLY. Fair grading policies. Very responsive and helpful. Funny too. His transition and handling of the switch to online classes was great too. Recommend!

Amazing Professor. His lectures made Cryptography more than just a glorified math class. Regularly cancelled lectures for business trips (pretty sure he did cyber security consultations or something along those lines) and regularly pushed back homework deadlines. Quizzes were extremely well written. Loved this guy.

One of my favorite professors

I really enjoyed the lectures. Homeworks were a bit challenging, but significantly easier than what you would see in 577 or 520. No programs at all.

Very good professor, though notation and grading criteria can be confusing at times. You can tell that he genuinely cares, though, and he works hard to make the material approachable. My biggest complaint is that he makes you do the homework in pairs.

Awesome, awesome professor. My favorite one in the CS department (and that's saying a lot... I've had good CS professors here). He's really generous to students, and wants them to succeed. He tries to learn everybody's name if possible and does a good job of it. Really interactive. Highly recommended! If engaged at all, you should get a good grade.

Somesh is a boss, easily one of my favorite professors at this university. Cryptography is not an easy subject, but dude is so laid back he makes it fun. Also one of the most generous graders I've encountered.

Somesh is a very helpful professor. There is no textbook for the class and his notes he gives in class are very helpful. Midterms aren't too bad, some of the questions are similar to past exams. Overall a very good class and clear professor.