Jessica Fridrich

Jessica Fridrich (born Jiří 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 (sometimes referred to as the "Fridrich method"), one of the most commonly used methods for speedsolving the Rubik's Cube, also known as speedcubing. She is considered 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, that is, (Cross, First 2 Layers, Orientation of the Last Layer, Permutation of the Last Layer).

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 (Cross). Next, the first layer's corners and edges of the second layer are put into their correct positions simultaneously in pairs (F2L). The last layer is solved by first orienting the yellow pieces (OLL) and then permuting the last layer of the cube using a few sets of algorithms (PLL). Provided by Wikipedia