Research
My research spans cryptographic theory and its applications to decentralized and distributed systems. The themes below are broad areas where I am actively interested in supervising students and developing new projects.
Fairness in Multi-Party Computation
Multi-party computation allows mutually distrustful parties to compute jointly while keeping their inputs private. A central challenge is fairness: preventing one party from learning the output while denying it to others.
Example questions
- What does fairness mean when parties may abort in the middle of the computation?
- Can we design protocols where no party can gain meaningful information by quitting early?
- How should fairness change when attackers are reasonably restricted?
- Can blockchain or payment mechanisms help recover fairness that is impossible in the classical model?
Useful background
- Discrete mathematics, probability, and algorithms.
- Basic cryptography: commitments, secret sharing, zero knowledge, and simulation-based security.
- Some familiarity with distributed systems or blockchains is useful, but not required at the start.
Project style
Mostly protocol design and cryptographic proofs. Some projects may involve small prototypes or experiments.
Starter reading
- Introductory material on secure multi-party computation and fairness (See Dan Boneh and Ivan Damgård's work).
- Recent papers on fair MPC, timed cryptography, optimistic fairness, or blockchain-assisted fairness.
Privacy-Preserving Applications
Modern applications leak information even when the underlying data is encrypted or hidden. A payment, query, lookup, or data-sharing request can reveal sensitive metadata: who interacted with whom, whether an action took place, what kind of information was requested, or when a transaction occurred. This theme studies cryptographic tools for minimizing such leakage in practical systems.
Example questions
- Can payment systems hide not only the payment details, but also whether a particular action occurred?
- How can users query or purchase information from a data provider without revealing what they are interested in?
- What metadata is still leaked by privacy-preserving protocols, and can we formally quantify or reduce it?
- Can we design efficient protocols for private data sharing, private lookups, or privacy-preserving conditional payments?
Useful background
- Basic cryptography.
- Some familiarity with blockchains, payments, or distributed systems is useful but not required at the start.
- Comfort with formal security definitions and adversarial modelling is helpful.
Project style
A mix of protocol design, security definitions, and cryptographic proofs.
Starter reading
- Introductory material on zero-knowledge proofs, private information retrieval, anonymous credentials, and secure computation.
Blockchains
Blockchains combine cryptography, distributed systems, incentives, and adversarial behaviour. I am interested in the cryptographic foundations of decentralized systems, especially where formal guarantees meet messy deployment realities.
Example questions
- What cryptographic assumptions do blockchain applications quietly rely on?
- How can decentralized protocols support fairness, accountability, and privacy?
- Can we design better cryptographic tools for payments, bridges, rollups, or threshold services?
Useful background
- Algorithms, probability, and basic cryptography.
- Distributed systems concepts such as consensus, synchrony, faults, and network assumptions.
Project style
A mix of theory, protocol design, and systems thinking. Some projects are proof-heavy; others may involve modelling, attacks, or implementation.
Starter reading
- Foundational papers on Bitcoin, payment protocols, and blockchain security models.
- Papers on fair exchange, payment channels, threshold signatures, bridges, and decentralized custody.
Cryptography meets Game Theory
Classical cryptography often models parties as honest or malicious. Many real systems instead involve participants who are strategic: they deviate only when it benefits them. This theme studies cryptographic protocols through an incentive-aware lens.
Example questions
- How do security definitions change when adversaries are rational rather than purely malicious?
- Can a protocol be cryptographically secure but economically fragile?
- How should rewards, penalties, deposits, or slashing mechanisms be designed?
- When do incentives help cryptography, and when do they create new attacks?
Useful background
- Mathematical maturity, probability, and comfort with formal models.
- Basic cryptography and some exposure to game theory.
- Interest in mechanism design, distributed systems, or blockchain economics is helpful.
Project style
Model-building and proof-heavy. The main challenge is often defining the right security or equilibrium notion before proving anything.
Starter reading
- Basic material on rational cryptography, mechanism design, and game-theoretic security (see Tim Roughgarden and Elaine Shi's notes and work).
- Papers on incentives in blockchains, fair exchange, rational MPC, and accountable protocols.
Post-Quantum Cryptography
Post-quantum cryptography studies cryptographic systems intended to remain secure against quantum-capable adversaries. I am interested in both its foundations and its applications to decentralized systems, cloud security, and long-term protection.
Example questions
- Which cryptographic tools need to change in a post-quantum world?
- How can post-quantum assumptions be used in protocols beyond encryption and signatures?
- How to build efficient algorithms with advacned cryptographic functionalities?
Useful background
- Linear algebra, algorithms, probability, and discrete mathematics.
- Some exposure to lattices, coding theory, or computational assumptions is useful but can be learned along the way.
Project style
Usually proof-heavy and mathematically oriented, with possible implementation or performance-analysis components.
Starter reading
- Introductory material on lattice-based cryptography (see Chris Peikert's survey and notes) and post-quantum signatures/encryption.
- Papers on post-quantum protocol design, threshold post-quantum cryptography, and cryptographic migration.