Justin Thaler
Research Partner, a16z
Associate Professor, Georgetown University
Justin Thaler is a Research Partner at a16z and an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Georgetown University. His research interests include verifiable computing, complexity theory, and algorithms for massive data sets. In 2011, he produced the first implementation of a general-purpose interactive proof system. He is the author of a comprehensive survey on SNARKs titled Proofs, Arguments, and Zero-Knowledge, and a co-creator of Apache DataSketches, an open-source library of production-quality streaming algorithms. Before joining a16z Crypto and Georgetown, Justin was a Research Scientist at Yahoo Labs. Before that, he completed her PhD in Computer Science at Harvard University.
Jonathan Rouach
Executive Director, ZKProof.org
CEO and co-Founder, QEDIT
Jonathan S. Rouach is the co-founder and CEO of QEDIT, helping enterprises leverage their data using Privacy Enhancing Techniques such as Zero-Knowledge Proofs. Before that, he co-founded a blockchain security company (sold to Digital Asset Holding), co-founded the Israeli Bitcoin Association , and co-founded Bits of Gold LTD, the leading Bitcoin exchange in Israel. Jonathan is an Electrical-Engineer from the Technion, served as an analyst in the Israeli Intelligence.
Eran Tromer
Professor, Boston University
founder, Sealance
Eran Tromer is a Professor of Computer Science at Boston University, working on cryptography and information security. He studies ways to build robust distributed computer systems that ensure privacy and integrity, using cryptographic tools such zero-knowledge proofs and homomorphic encryption. He also studies the resilience of computing platforms to data theft and tampering, such as side-channel attacks at the physical and software levels.
He is a founding scientist of the Zcash privacy-preserving blockchain; a founder of Sealance, which builds blockchain-based privacy-preserving financial regulation technology; and a founder of the ZKProof Standardization Effort. He received his Ph.D. at the Weizmann Institute of Science, and previously pursued his research at Columbia University, Tel Aviv University, MIT and Microsoft Research.
Muthu Venkitasubramaniam
Associate Professor, Georgetown University
CTO and co-founder, Ligero Inc.
An expert on zero-knowledge proofs, secure multiparty computation, and concurrent security, Muthu earned his PhD in Computer Science from Cornell University and is currently an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Georgetown University. He is the CTO and co-founder of Ligero Inc. which builds state of the art zero-knowledge and multiparty computation protocols. Muthu is one of the founding members of the zero-knowledge standardization. He is a recipient of a Google Faculty Research Award and the ICDE 2017 Influential Paper Award.
Shafi Goldwasser
Shafi Goldwasser is the Director of the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing, and the C. Lester Hogan Professor in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at UC Berkeley. She is also the RSA Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT, and a professor of computer science and applied mathematics at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. Goldwasser received a BS in applied mathematics from Carnegie Mellon University in 1979, and MS and PhD in computer science from UC Berkeley in 1984.
Goldwasser was the recipient of ACM Turing Award for 2012. She was also the recipient of the Gödel Prize in 1993 and another in 2001 for her work on interactive proofs and connections to approximation, and was awarded the ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award (1996), the RSA award in mathematics (1998), the ACM Athena award for women in computer science (2008), the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Science (2010), the IEEE Emanuel R. Piore Award (2011), the Barnard College Medal of Distinction (2016), and the Suffrage Science Award (2016). She is a member of the AAAS, ACM, NAE, NAS, Israeli Academy of Science, London Mathematical Society, and Russian Academy of Science.