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Kartik Nayak

Associate Professor of Computer Science
Computer Science
308 Research Drive, Durham, NC 27708

Overview


Research interests are security, applied cryptography, distributed computing and blockchains. Recent focus topics include robust and efficient design of blockchain protocols and efficient privacy-preserving computation.

Current Appointments & Affiliations


Associate Professor of Computer Science · 2025 - Present Computer Science, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences

Recent Publications


Context-Dependent Threshold Decryption and Its Applications

Conference Lecture Notes in Computer Science · January 1, 2026 In a threshold decryption system, a secret key is split across a number of parties so that any threshold of them can decrypt a given ciphertext. We introduce a new concept in threshold decryption called a decryption context, which is an additional argument ... Full text Cite

Communication and Round Efficient Parallel Broadcast Protocols

Conference Lecture Notes in Computer Science · January 1, 2026 This work focuses on the parallel broadcast primitive, where each of the n parties wish to broadcast their ℓ-bit input in parallel. We consider the authenticated model with PKI and digital signatures that is secure against t Full text Cite

Optimistic, Signature-Free Reliable Broadcast and Its Applications

Conference Ccs 2025 Proceedings of the 2025 ACM Sigsac Conference on Computer and Communications Security · November 22, 2025 Reliable broadcast (RBC) is a key primitive in fault-tolerant distributed systems, and improving its efficiency can benefit a wide range of applications. This work focuses on signature-free RBC protocols, which are particularly attractive due to their comp ... Full text Cite
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Recent Grants


CAREER: Scalable Consensus Protocol Design with Accountability and Privacy under Practical Failure Models

ResearchPrincipal Investigator · Awarded by National Science Foundation · 2023 - 2028

Disentangling Transaction Privacy and Consensus in Ethereum

ResearchPrincipal Investigator · Awarded by Ethereum Foundation · 2022 - 2027

Collaborative Research: SaTC: CORE: Medium: Quicksilver: a Write-oriented, Private, Outsourced Relational Database Management System

ResearchPrincipal Investigator · Awarded by National Science Foundation · 2020 - 2025

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Education


University of Maryland, College Park · 2018 Ph.D.

External Links


Website