Open Positions (Fall 2026): I am looking to hire PhD students! Focus areas: All areas of Cryptography with emphasis on: Zero-Knowledge Proofs, Oblivious Primitives on TEEs, Cryptography+AI. Interested candidates please email me your CV and research interests.

About Me

I am an Associate Professor at the Computer Science and Engineering Department of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST).

Previously, I received my PhD in Computer Science from Boston University and was a Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Institute for Advanced Computer Science of the University of Maryland. I received my Diploma in Applied Mathematics from the National Technical University of Athens.

Selected News

  • 2026
    Eurocrypt 2026: Our paper on Dynamic zero-knowledge SNARKs was accepted! Joint work with Weije Wang and Babis Papamanthou from Yale and Shravan Srinivasan from Lagrange Labs. Many thanks to Lagrange Labs for supporting this work!
  • 2026
    PETS 2026: Our paper Gryphes on Hybrid Proofs for Modular SNARKs was accepted. Work w/ my students Jiajun Xin, Xiangan Tian, Christodoulos Pappas and support from OKX.
  • 2025
    IEEE S&P 2025: Two papers accepted! (1) Verifiable Time-Lock Puzzles w/ my PhD student Jiajun Xin; (2) Hydraproofs Vector Commitments w/ my PhD student Christodoulos Pappas and Babis Pamanthou from Yale.
  • 2025
    USENIX Security 2025: Two papers accepted! Obliviator introduces new oblivious operators for SQL on TEEs (w/ my student Xian Wang & collaborators from UCSC); (2) Hobbit is the first space-efficient zero-knowledge SNARK with optimal prover time (w/ my PhD student Christodoulos Pappas).
  • 2024
    CCS 2024: Two papers accepted! (1) Sparrow is a Space-efficient zkSNARK with applications to verifiable decision trees; (2) Zero-knowledge proofs for deep neural network training via sumcheck-based IVC.

Research Interests

My research focus is the development of novel cryptographic protocols for a variety of application scenarios aiming for provably secure solutions and optimized implemented systems.

Zero-Knowledge Proofs Polynomial Commitments Oblivious Primitives Trusted Execution Enclaves Searchable Encryption Verifiable Computation Cryptographic Accumulators Cloud Data Privacy

Teaching

  • COMP 2011: Programming with C++
  • COMP 2012: Object-oriented Programming and Data Structures
  • CSIT 5710: Cryptography
  • MFIT 5002: Blockchain

Contact

Address:
CSE Department, HKUST
Clearwater Bay, Hong Kong
Email:
dipapado [at] cse [dot] ust [dot] hk