Speakers
Ittai Abraham
Ittai is a founding member of the VMware Research Group, the VMware Blockchain Project and the VMware Research Group in Israel. Prior to joining VMware, he was a researcher at Microsoft Research Silicon Valley. He holds a PhD in Computer Science from the Hebrew University.
His work spans from the theory of algorithms through the foundations of distributed computing to practical aspects in industrial research, algorithm engineering, distributed systems and blockchain technology.
Kartik Nayak
Kartik Nayak is an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science at Duke University. He works in the areas of security, applied cryptography, distributed computing, and blockchains. Before joining Duke University, he spent a year as a postdoctoral researcher at VMware Research. Before that, he graduated from the University of Maryland, College Park. He has served on program committees of several top-tier conferences such as ACM CCS, PODC, Asiacrypt, and PoPETS. Kartik is a recipient of the 2016 Google Ph.D. fellowship in Security.
Akshar Kaul
Akshar Kaul is an Advisory Research Software Engineer at IBM Research, Bangalore, India. He received Masters Degree in Computer Science and Engineering from Indian Institute of Science (IISc.) Bangalore. His research focus is on “Computation on Encrypted Data” especially in the context of outsourced databases. He has also worked on various projects related to permissioned blockchain networks (Hyperledger Fabric).
Pankaj Dayama
Dr. Pankaj Dayama is a Senior Technical Staff Member and Master Inventor at IBM Research India. He is currently leading Blockchain Solutions group at IRL. His current work spans different aspects of Blockchain technology including building innovative solutions in supply chain space working directly with clients, and enabling privacy preserving network collaboration on Blockchain. He has published about 20 papers in peer reviewed conferences and has more than 50 filed patents in the USPTO to his credit.
Esha Ghosh
Esha Ghosh is a Senior Researcher in the Cryptography and Privacy group at Microsoft Research, Redmond. Her research interests include end-to-end encrypted systems, decentralized identity management, secure computation and authenticated data structures. More recently, she has been interested in information leakage in ML deployment. Before joining MSR, Esha graduated from Brown University in 2018.