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. My research interests are mainly in cryptography and its practical applications. I am very interested in secure public-key distribution for the web, email and secure messaging apps. In the past, I’ve worked on oblivious file systems, “encrypted Facebooks,” append-only logs on top of Bitcoin, anonymous cryptocurrencies and Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT) protocols.
The truth
Alin is a prolific slav-squatter. In his free time, he likes to play piano, sit in coffee shops, 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.