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Cryptography

Smart received his PhD from the University of Kent at Canterbury in 1992. Smart spent three years at Hewlett-Packard from 1997 to 2000. From 2000 to 2017 he was at the University of Bristol. From 2018 he has been based in the COSIC group at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. Smart has held a Royal Society Wolfson Merit Award, and two ERC Advanced Grant. He was Vice President of the International Association for Cryptologic Research (2014-2016). In 2016 he was named as a Fellow of the IACR.

Smart was a founder of the startup Identum, which was bought by Trend Micro in 2008. In 2013 he co-founded Unbound Security, which was sold to Coinbase in 2022. He is also the co-founder, along with Kenny Paterson, of the Real World Cryptography conference series. Currently the Chief Academic Officer at Zama.

Zac is the CEO and co-founder of Aztec. A software engineer, former neutrino scientist and self-taught cryptographer, Zac co-published the PLONK and Plookup papers, revolutionizing zero-knowledge cryptography within web3 and beyond. As the co-founder and CEO of Aztec, Zac is spearheading the development of a programmable privacy-first layer2 for Ethereum.

Avishay Yanai is the CEO and co-founder of Soda Labs. Soda Labs integrates advanced security and privacy technologies into existing platforms, enabling millions of users to transact and collaborate without compromising sensitive data.

Formerly, Avishay worked with dWallet Labs on major projects such as Tiresias and 2PC-MPC, as well as advising various blockchain and cryptography companies. Dr. Yanai holds a doctorate in computer science from Bar Ilan University and has served as a cryptography researcher at VMware for about 5 year. There, he developed innovative solutions for privacy-preserving computation, focusing on areas such as private set intersection (PSI), federated learning (FL), and digital/crypto currencies.

Cyprien is currently a researcher at dWallet Labs and 3MI Labs. Since obtaining his PhD in 2021, Cyprien focusses on improving advanced cryptography protocols like multiparty computation and zero-knowledge proofs and their provable security.

Jordi is Co-Founder of Polygon. He led the development and implementation of Polygon zkEVM, a leading zk-rollup. As one of the most widely recognized Ethereum developers, he has made several high-impact contributions to the Ethereum community, including CIRCOM and PIL, free and open-source projects demonstrating his commitment to Web3 values.

He has a long history in the Ethereum community, including co-founding the WhiteHat Group to save funds during The DAO hack early in the network’s history. He has spent years as a sought-after auditor, leading the teams that poured over the contracts of MakerDAO and Aragon. Before Hermez, he co-founded several projects, including the donation platform Giveth, DAppNode, and Iden3.

Ian Miers is the Lead Research Scientist at Aleo and a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Maryland. As a co-inventor of Zcash, he has been instrumental in pioneering the use of zkSNARKs in blockchain technology. His contributions include the development of Zerocash, the underlying protocol for Zcash, and numerous other second-generation private payment systems. Additionally, he co-authored Zexe, which established the groundwork for privacy-preserving smart contract platforms such as Aleo, and has advanced research in decentralized anonymous credentials and zk-creds.

Albert Garreta is leading the cryptography research team at Nethermind. Formerly he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Basque Center of Applied Mathematics (Spain). He received his PhD in mathematics from Stevens Institute of Technology (NJ, USA). His main research areas revolve around all types of zk-related topics such as code-based SNARKs, lookup and folding schemes, soundness aspects of interactive proofs, etc.

Omer Shlomovits is Founder & CEO of Ingonyama, a next-generation semiconductor company, building specialized hardware for Zero-Knowledge Proofs. Previously co-founded ZenGo, an MPC mobile wallet for digital assets and co-founded MPC-Alliance, a consortium of 50+ companies collaborating to advance MPC technology.

Ryan Lasmaili serves as the Co-Founder & CEO of Vaultree, a pioneering company specializing in the world’s fastest data in use encryption (FHE) technology for databases. Over the past 12 years, Ryan has dedicated himself to technology startups, focusing on developing innovative solutions to significant challenges.

With a background in financial mathematics, Ryan's passion lies in tackling complex issues, particularly in the realm of cybersecurity.

Dima Kogan is Chief Technology Officer and co-founder of Fordefi. Dima’s career in cryptography and cybersecurity spans more than 15 years in academia, industry and government. Dima’s research has been published by top-tier academic conferences, and he was awarded the “Best Young Researcher” prize at the Eurocrypt 2018, Theory of Cryptography Conference 2019 and Eurocrypt 2020. Dima holds a PhD in computer science from Stanford University and is a graduate of the elite Talpiot program.

Ilya Volokh Ilia has a B.Sc in mathematics from Technion and an M.Sc in mathematics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Following his studies, he coached the top-ranked Israeli female and male tennis players. After reading about validity rollups, he decided to change course directly to StarkWare.