Nir Drucker

I am a Security, Privacy & Cryptography Research Scientist at IBM Research - Israel, in the AI Security group, which develops the IBM HElayers SDK. I hold a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics (Cryptography) from the University of Haifa and an M.Sc. degree in Operations Research from the faculty of Industrial Engineering & Management of the Technion I.I.T.
Before joining IBM, I worked for 3.5 years as a Senior Applied Scientist in AWS's Cryptographic Algorithms team. Prior to AWS, I spent eight years at Intel as a Software Developer in two groups: (a) a team developing low-level security technologies (e.g., Intel SGX) in FW/SW, and (b) a team developing a CAD VLSI timing-verification simulator in C/C++.
My research interests span applied cryptography, security, and privacy-enhancing technologies (PET). At IBM Research, I have focused primarily on Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE), privacy-preserving AI, and secure computation, and co-authored the book Homomorphic Encryption for Data Science (HE4DS). In recent years, I have also worked on the threat modeling of CBDC solutions and the development of business logic for UTXO-based systems. FHE continues to be a major area of interest for me, while an increasing part of my research is devoted to understanding the cryptographic and security aspects of quantum computing.