Apoorvaa Deshpande

That's me 

Apoorvaa Deshpande
Ph.D. Student
Department of Computer Science
Brown University

Contact

Office: Room 421, CIT, 115 Waterman Street, Providence, RI 02912
Email: apoorvaa_deshpande [at] brown [dot] edu

Brief Biography

Welcome to my homepage! I am a fifth year graduate student at Brown University, Department of Computer Science, advised by Prof. Anna Lysyankaya. I am also a visiting student at CSAIL, MIT working with Yael Kalai. I work in the area of cryptography; I am interested in fundamental cryptographic primitives such as zero-knowledge proofs and arguments, and their applications to the blockchain space.

In the summer of 2018, I had an amazing time as an intern at Microsoft Research, New England with Yael Kalai. I spent the summer of 2017 in FACT Center, IDC Herzliya, Israel working with Alon Rosen and Elette Boyle. In the summer of 2015, I had the great opportunity to attend the Cryptography Program at the Simon's Institute for the Theory of Computing. Before Brown University, I completed my B.E (Hons) Computer Science + M.Sc (Hons) Mathematics from BITS Pilani University in 2013. I also spent a year at Microsoft Research India as a Research Fellow, where I worked with Raghav Bhaskar and Prasad Naldurg in security and privacy.

Along with computer science and research, an integral part of my life is my music. More about it here.

Recent News

I was selected as one of the 12 graduate students across Brown University to speak at the annual event called Research Matters. For this event, I delivered a TED-style talk about my research.

Publications/Manuscripts

  • Fully Homomorphic NIZK and NIWI Proofs
    Prabhanjan Ananth, Apoorvaa Deshpande, Yael Tauman Kalai, Anna Lysyanskaya
    PENCIL - Workshop on Privacy Enhancing Cryptography in Ledgers, EUROCRYPT 2019

Invited Talks

  • I was invited to speak at the CrossFyre Workshop held in conjunction with Eurocrypt 2019 at Darmstadt, Germany

  • I was invited to give a talk at the DIMACS/MACS Workshop on Cryptography for the RAM Model of Computation held in MIT Media Lab from June 8-10, 2016.
    Here are my slides for the talk.

Teaching

  • Teaching Assistant for CSCI 2590: Advanced Topics in Cryptography (Spring 2019)

  • Teaching Assistant for CSCI 1510: Introduction to Cryptography (Spring 2017)

  • Instructor for Introduction to Computer Science offered in Summer At Brown (Summer 2016), a special program designed for high school students

  • Co-Instructor for an independent course on Globalization of Indian Classical Music (Fall 2017) offered by Music Department, Brown University