Open Positions

My research interests lie in applied cryptography, specifically cryptocurrencies and applications of zero-knowledge proofs. Please see below for opportunities to work with me.

IITB students

If you are an EE student at IIT Bombay interested in working on applied cryptography for your BTP/MTP/SRE/DDP/PhD thesis, please send me an email. I am looking for students who satisfy the following criteria.

  • Knowledge of cryptography: Should have passed EE720 or CS409 with a decent grade (BB or above).

  • Strong programming skills: Please include your GitHub username in your email to me. If you have any major programming projects (not course projects), please include a link to the code repository.

  • Program-specific criteria:

    • BTech students: If you are looking to register for BTP-1 under my guidance, you should not have registered for more than two additional learning courses in that semester. I can offer BTP-2 only to those students who have completed BTP-1 under my guidance.
    • Dual Degree students: I can offer DDP only to those students who have completed SRE under my guidance.
    • MTech students: You need to be registered in the 3-year MTech RA program. I can offer MTP only to those students who have completed the MTech seminar under my guidance.

Three students have worked with me so far on applied cryptography. They are all working in cryptography/cryptocurrency companies.

  • Varun Thakore (MTech 2024) worked with me on proof of reserves for Monero exchanges using Nova, a folding-based ZK proof system. Our work was accepted in PETS 2025 (paper link). PETS is an A-ranked conference according to the CORE rankings. Varun currently works as a cryptography engineer at zkSecurity.
  • Arijit Dutta (PhD 2021) worked with me on proof of reserves protocols for Monero, MimbleWimble, and QuisQuis. Our work resulted in four papers (CVCBT 2019, IEEE S&B 2019, Indocrypt 2019, IEEE TIFS 2021). After working for about 2 years (July 2021 to March 2023) at Aztec Protocol as a Cryptography Engineer, Arijit joined Consensys as a Senior Research Engineer in June 2023.
  • Suyash Bagad (DD 2020) worked with me on three projects related to proof of reserves and transaction graph analysis. Our work resulted in three papers (CVCBT 2020, IEEE S&B 2020, IEEE TIFS 2021). After working for 3 years (Sep 2020 to Sep 2023) at Aztec Protocol as an Applied Cryptography Engineer, Suyash joined Ingonyama as a Cryptography Researcher in Jan 2024.

Prospective PhD students

To work towards a PhD under my guidance, you have to first gain admission to the PhD program of the EE department by passing the written test and interview. PhD admissions happen twice a year (May and December). Please see the PhD admissions page for more details.

Internships

I have floated one topic for the 2025 Trust Lab Summer Internship. The topic details are below.

Project Title: Folding-Based Zero-Knowledge Proofs of Post-Quantum Signatures
Abstract: This project involves the design and development of folding-based R1CS circuits which encode the verification algorithms of the post-quantum signature schemes ML-DSA and Falcon. We will also develop regular R1CS circuits for PQ signature verification which do not use folding, to quantify the improvements due to folding. Our end goal is to demonstrate that folding-based R1CS circuits for PQ signature verification can be proved and verified using significantly fewer computational resources compared to regular R1CS circuits.
Prerequisites: Knowledge of cryptography, Rust programming. Some background in ZK proofs is a plus.

Please apply using this form. See last year's Trust Lab internship page for more details about the internship.

Pre-doctoral Fellows

I am looking to fill one Trust Lab Pre-doctoral Fellow position. The appointment will be for one year. The topic is the same as the internship topic above. Click here to apply.