Jessica Fridrich


Jessica Fridrich is a professor at Binghamton University, who specializes in data hiding applications in digital imagery. She is also known for documenting and popularizing the CFOP method, one of the most commonly used methods for speedsolving the Rubik's Cube, also known as speedcubing. She is considered as one of the pioneers of speedcubing, along with Lars Petrus. Nearly all of the fastest speedcubers have based their methods on Fridrich's, usually referred to as CFOP.
The method describes solving the cube in a layer-by-layer fashion. First a "cross" is made on the first layer, consisting of the center piece and four edges. The first layer corners and edges of the second layer are put into their correct positions simultaneously. The last layer is solved by first orienting and then permuting the last layer of the cube using a few sets of algorithms.

Professional life

Jessica Fridrich works as a professor at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Binghamton University and specializes in digital watermarking and forensics. She received her MS degree in applied mathematics from the Czech Technical University in Prague in 1987, and her PhD in systems science from Binghamton University in 1995.