About

The official statement

I was born and raised in Pitești, a small city in Romania, and moved to the US in 2008. I was always fascinated with computers: playing on them, fixing them & programming them. I like to read, write and talk about ideas. You can see some of my writing on this website and on Decentralized Thoughts.

I am currently a Postdoctoral Researcher at VMware Research. My broad research interests are in cryptography and its practical applications. I am very interested in authenticated data structures, especially if based on more exotic primitives, such as constant-sized polynomial commitments. In the past, I’ve worked on transparency logs, threshold cryptography, anonymous cryptocurrencies, scalable Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT) protocols, append-only logs on top of Bitcoin, and oblivious file systems.

The truth

Alin is a prolific slav-squatter. In his free time, he likes to play piano, sit in coffee shops, ride motorcycles, and lift things up and put them back down again. Slowly. He also enjoys travelling, but only to destinations with total solar eclipses. Naturally, he dislikes clouds. (Please join him in Antarctica, in 2021.)

Alin might buy a motorcycle and risk the few, still-functioning limbs in his body. Someone should convince him not to do this.

The motorcycle

Alin recently purchased a 2017 Honda Rebel 500. He has never been more happy and terrified at the same time. Even after taking basic and intermediate riding courses, he remains terrified. This is probably for the best. Wish him luck.