Anca Nitulescu is joining CryptoLab (Update: now CryptoNetLab) as a Research Scientist. After obtaining their PhD in cryptography at ENS Paris, they worked as a Postdoctoral Scholar at Aarhus University and as Chief Cryptographer at Cosmian before coming to Protocol Labs. Their main research interests are cryptographic proving systems, especially zero-knowledge proofs and succinct arguments of knowledge (SNARKs).

We asked Anca about the road that led them here and what the future looks like:

What path brought you to PL?

I studied SNARKs for so many years motivated mostly by applications in the area of delegated computation. I was motivated to broaden my knowledge on this topic, learn more on other use-cases of SNARKs and use my background to improve these protocols so I am excited to start working on this at PL.

What are you working on?

At PL I will work on the Filecoin protocol, especially on improving SNARKs and Proofs-of-Replication.

What future technology are you most excited about?

My research interests at the moment are focused on design proofs for delegated computation on encrypted data. This is at the intersection of ensuring privacy and integrity for data that is stored remotely. I think it would be really valuable to achieve both these goals in practice for delegated storage and computation.