Alessandro Chiesa

Expertise Cryptography, Complexity Theory, Computer Security Alessandro Chiesa is a faculty member in computer science. He conducts research in complexity theory, cryptography, and security, with a focus on the theoretical foundations and practical implementations of cryptographic proofs that are short and easy to verify. He is a co-author of several zkSNARK libraries, and is a co-inventor of the Zerocash protocol. He has co-founded Zcash and StarkWare Industries. He is a recipient of an IEEE SP Test-of-Time Award (2024), Sloan Research Fellowship (2021), an Okawa Foundation Research Grant (2020), and Google Faculty Research Awards (2018 and 2017). He was included in MIT Technology Review's "35 Innovators Under 35" list in 2018. Education Ph.D. | Computer Science 2014 – 2014 MIT M.Eng. | Computer Science 2010 – 2010 MIT S.B. | Computer Science 2009 – 2009 MIT S.B. | Mathematics 2009 – 2009 MIT Teaching & PhD PhD Students Zihan Hu, Zijing Di, Burcu Yildiz, Ziyi Guan, Guy Weissenberg, Giacomo Fenzi, Christian Knabenhans, Yuxi Zheng, Ignacio Manzur Courses Foundations of probabilistic proofs CS-459 Probabilistic proof systems (eg PCPs and IPs) have had a tremendous impact on theoretical computer science, as well as on real-world secure systems. They underlie delegation of computation protocols and hardness of approximation. This course covers the foundations of probabilistic proof systems. Lattice-based Cryptography CS-800 This course provides a comprehensive overview of lattice-based cryptography, ranging from hash functions, signatures, proof systems, public-key encryption all the way to fully homomorphic encryption and obfuscation, with a theoretical overview together with concrete considerations. Theory of computation CS-251 This course constitutes an introduction to theory of computation. It discusses the basic theoretical models of computing (finite automata, Turing machine), as well as, provides a solid and mathematically precise understanding of their fundamental capabilities and limitations. Foundations of Probabilistic Proofs The discovery and study of probabilistic proof systems, such as PCPs and IPs, have had a tremendous impact on theoretical computer science. These proof systems have numerous applications (e.g., to hardness of approximation) but one of their most compelling uses is a direct one: to construct cryptographic protocols that enable super fast verification of long computations. This course introduces students to the foundations of probabilistic proof systems, covering both classical results as well as modern efficient constructions. The playlist of video lectures is here and the syllabus is here.