Vinod Vaikuntanathan

Vinod Vaikuntanathan is the Ford Foundation Professor of Engineering in the MIT EECS department and a principal investigator at MIT CSAIL. He holds a BTech from IIT Madras (2003), and SM/PhD degrees from MIT (2005/2009). His research focuses on cryptography, particularly fully homomorphic encryption (FHE), lattice-based cryptography, and quantum-resistant systems. He co-founded Duality Technologies as Chief Cryptographer.

**Education:**

• BTech in Computer Science (2003), Indian Institute of Technology Madras
• SM in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science (2005), MIT
• PhD in Computer Science (2009), MIT

**Research Interests:**
His work spans FHE (enabling computations on encrypted data), lattice-based cryptography (post-quantum security), and intersections with quantum computing, machine learning, and privacy. He explores applications in secure computation, algorithm design, and cryptographic protocols.

**Awards:**
Recipient of the Gödel Prize (2022), Simons Investigator (2023), and MacVicar Faculty Fellow (2024). His work on FHE and lattice algorithms has earned widespread acclaim in cryptography and theoretical computer science.

**Teaching & Mentorship:**

• Advanced cryptography courses at MIT (e.g., 6.5630, 6.876J)
• Advised PhD students (e.g., Sergey Gorbunov, Tianren Liu) and postdocs (e.g., Nir Bitansky, Mark Zhandry) now leading positions in academia and industry

**Collaborations:**

• Organizer of the Charles River Crypto Day and MIT Cryptography Seminar
• Principal investigator on grants from NSF, DARPA, and Microsoft