Yupeng ZhangView profile
Assistant Professor
Yupeng Zhang is an Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, with an affiliate appointment in Computer Science. His research focuses on cybersecurity and applied cryptography , particularly zero-knowledge proofs , secure multiparty computations , and their applications in blockchain and machine learning. Education: Ph.D., Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Maryland (2018) M.Phil., Information Engineering, Chinese University of Hong Kong (2013) Bachelor of Engineering, Information Engineering, Chinese University of Hong Kong (2011) Research Highlights: Developed scalable zero-knowledge proof systems for blockchain and machine learning Created verifiable computation frameworks for SQL and RAM Advancing privacy-preserving ML and cross-chain blockchain bridges Grants: NSF CAREER award Air Force Research Lab DARPA Google Research Scholar Award Facebook Research Award Latticex Foundation Teaching: CS 461/ECE 422: Computer Security I CS 591 SP: Security and Privacy ECE 407/CS 407: Cryptography ECE 598 YPZ: Advanced Topics in Applied Cryptography Co-taught MOOC on Zero-Knowledge Proofs (Spring 2023) Professional Service: Program Vice Co-Chair, USENIX Security 2024 Program Committee, Crypto 2025, S&P 2025 Reviewer for major journals and conferences







