Protocol Labs Research
About
People
Research
Groups Areas Talks Publications Tutorials
Outreach
Blog

Irene Giacomelli

Research Scientist / Cryptonet

Education

PhD in Cryptography, 2016

Aarhus University

MSc in Mathematics, 2012

University of Pisa

BS in Mathematics, 2009

University of Pisa

Irene is an Italian cryptographer based in Switzerland. She completed her PhD at Aarhus University (Denmark) in 2016 after her undergraduate studies in Mathematics at Pisa University (Italy). After completing her PhD, she was a research assistant (postdoc), first in the USA (Madison, WI) and then in Italy (ISI Foundation, Turin). Her postdoctoral work focused on privacy-preserving machine-learning. Her research interests lie in the area of cryptographic protocol design and in the intersections between cryptography and other fields such machine-learning and blockchain technology.

Areas of Expertise

Cryptography

Publications

2023-08-30 / Report
Filecoin Proof of Useful Space
This document provides a simple formal definition of Proof of Space (taken from the academic literature) and an informal definition of persistent and useful space (needed for Filecoin). It describes construction details and a security proof for the Stacked-DRGs proof of space (SDR), and goes into how SDR is used in Filecoin.
Irene Giacomelli , Luca Nizzardo
Cryptonet
Cryptography
2020-04-08 / Conference paper
MonZa: Fast maliciously secure two party computation on Z_{2^k}
In this paper we present a new 2-party protocol for secure computation over rings of the form Z2k. As many recent efficient MPC protocols supporting dishonest majority, our protocol consists of a heavier (input-independent) pre-processing phase and a very efficient online stage.
IACR International Conference on Practice and Theory of Public-Key Cryptography (PKC) / 2020.05.04 / Edinburgh, Scotland
Dario Catalano , Mario Di Raimondo, Dario Fiore, Irene Giacomelli
Cryptonet
Cryptography
2019-11-20 / Report
Exploring connections between active learning and model extraction
Machine learning is being increasingly used by individuals, research institutions, and corporations. This has resulted in the surge of Machine Learning-as-a-Service (MLaaS) - cloud services that provide (a) tools and resources to learn the model, and (b) a user-friendly query interface to access the model.
Varun Chandrasekaran, Kamalika Chaudhuri, Irene Giacomelli , Somesh Jha, Songbai Yan
Cryptonet
2019-10-02 / Conference paper
Efficient UC commitment extension with homomorphism for free (and applications)
Homomorphic universally composable (UC) commitments allow for the sender to reveal the result of additions and multiplications of values contained in commitments without revealing the values themselves while assuring the receiver of the correctness of such computation on committed values.
Advances in Cryptology – ASIACRYPT 2019 / 2019.10.02
Ignacio Cascudo, Ivan Damgård, Bernardo David, Nico Döttling, Rafael Dowsley, Irene Giacomelli
Cryptonet
Cryptography

Blog posts

2020-11-23 / Blog
A research perspective on Filecoin, part two
In Part One, we traced the intellectual and technological history of modern implementations of distributed ledger technology. Now let’s take a stroll through the technological landscape around the time of Filecoin’s release:
David Dalrymple , Irene Giacomelli , Karola Kirsanow
Cryptonet , CryptoComputeLab
Cryptoeconomics , Cryptography , Distributed systems
2020-11-16 / Blog
A research perspective on Filecoin
The Filecoin network is launching in the middle of a revolution in internet architecture, where vulnerable centralized services dependent on trusted parties are being replaced with resilient decentralized solutions based on verifiable computation, and internet services are being relocated from inefficient central monoliths to the far reaches of the network by peer-to-peer markets.
David Dalrymple , Irene Giacomelli , Karola Kirsanow
Cryptonet , CryptoComputeLab
Cryptoeconomics , Cryptography , Distributed systems