About
I am a PhD Candidate in my final year at Purdue University in the Computer Science department. Recently, I successfully defended my dissertation and will be joining Professor Jonathan Katz at the University of Maryland and Professor Justin Thaler at Georgetown University as a Postdoctoral Researcher in September 2022. I am extremely fortunate to be advised by Professor Jeremiah Blocki. My broad research interests are in Theoretical Cryptography, Efficient Proof/Argument Systems, and Coding Theory. I am a member of both the Cryptography Group and the Theory Group at Purdue. I was the President of the Computer Science Graduate Student Association at Purdue from May 2020 to May 2022, and was one of the organizers of the Purdue Theoretical Computer Science Theory Seminar during Spring 2020.
I was a Graduate Fellow during the Summer of 2019 at the Reichman University (IDC Herzliya) FACT Center under the guidence of Alon Rosen.
I received my M.Sc. in Computer Science from Purdue University in 2019. Prior to that, I received a B.S. in both Mathematics (Hons.) and Information & Computer Science (Hons.) from the University of California, Irvine, and graduated with Campuswide Honors from the Campuswide Honors Collegium (formerly known as the Campuswide Honors Program).
Papers
All authors are listed in alphabetical order by last name. More recent papers appear first.
In Submission
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Honest Majority Multi-Prover Interactive Arguments
Alexander R. Block, Christina Garman
Cryptology ePrint Archive: [pdf]
Conference Publications
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Memory-Hard Puzzles in the Standard Model with Applications to Memory-Hard Functions and Resource-Bounded Locally Decodable Codes
Mohammad Hassan Ameri, Alexander R. Block, Jeremiah Blocki
in SCN 2022 [pdf]
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Time- and Space-Efficient Arguments from Groups of Unknown Order
Alexander R. Block, Justin Holmgren, Alon Rosen, Ron D. Rothblum, Pratik Soni
in CRYPTO 2021 [pdf] [talk] [doi]
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$P_4$-free Partition and Cover Numbers and Applications
Alexander R. Block, Simina Brânzei, Hemanta K. Maji, Himanshi Mehta, Tamalika Mukherjee, Hai H. Nguyen
in ITC 2021 [pdf] [talk] [doi]
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Private and Resource-Bounded Locally Decodable Codes for Insertions and Deletions
Alexander R. Block, Jeremiah Blocki
in ISIT 2021 [pdf] [doi]
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Locally Decodable/Correctable Codes for Insertions and Deletions
Alexander R. Block, Jeremiah Blocki, Elena Grigorescu, Shubhang Kulkarni, Minshen Zhu
in FSTTCS 2020 [pdf] [talk] [doi]
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Public-Coin Zero-Knowledge Arguments with (almost) Minimal Time and Space Overheads
Alexander R. Block, Justin Holmgren, Alon Rosen, Ron D. Rothblum, Pratik Soni
in TCC 2020 [pdf] [talk] [doi]
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Secure Computation with Constant Communication Overhead using Multiplication Embeddings
Alexander R. Block, Hemanta K. Maji, Hai H. Nguyen
in INDOCRYPT 2018 [pdf] [doi]
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Secure Computation using Leaky Correlations (Asymptotically Optimal Constructions)
Alexander R. Block, Divya Gupta, Hemanta K. Maji, Hai H. Nguyen
in TCC 2018 [pdf] [doi]
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Secure Computation based on Leaky Correlations: High Resilience Setting
Alexander R. Block, Hemanta K. Maji, Hai H. Nguyen
in CRYPTO 2017 [pdf] [talk] [doi]
Honors Research Thesis
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Combined Games
Alexander R. Block, Boao Huang
[pdf]
Academic and Scientific Service
Conference and Journal Reviews
CRYPTO 2022,
IEEE TDSC 2022,
CCS 2022,
USENIX 2022,
S&P 2022,
IMACC 2021,
TCC 2021,
Information Processing Letters 2021,
CRYPTO 2021,
NDSS 2021,
TCC 2020,
SCN 2020,
CRYPTO 2020,
ITCS 2020,
NDSS 2020,
ITCS 2019,
TCC 2017,
TCC 2016-B
Academic Organization Positions
Awards
- Purdue Three Minute Thesis Competition Finalist (2022)
- Emil Stefanov Fellowship in Computer Science, Purdue University (2021)
- Outstanding Service to the Department of Computer Science, Purdue University (2021, 2022)
- Chancellor's Award of Distinction, University of California, Irvine (2015)
- Campuswide Honors, Campuswide Honors Collegium, University of California, Irvine (2015)
- Honors in Mathematics, University of California, Irvine (2015)
- Best Poster and Best Presentation, Pacific Coast Undergraduate Mathematics Conference, Mathematical Association of America (2015)
- Founding member of Pi Mu Epsilon - UC Irvine Chapter, University of California, Irvine (2014)
- Dean's Honors List, University of California, Irvine (2012-2015)
Teaching
Graduate Teaching Assistant Positions
- [Fall 2019] Graduate TA for CS 51500 (Graduate Matrix Computations) with Professor David Gleich
- [Spring 2019] Graduate TA for CS 58400 (Graduate Theory of Computation and Computational Complexity) with Professor Simina Brânzei
- [Fall 2016] Graduate TA for CS 55500 (Graduate Cryptography) with Professor Hemanta K. Maji
- [Spring 2016] Graduate TA for CS 18200 (Undergraduate Foundations of Computer Science with Professor Ananth Grama
- [Fall 2015] Graduate TA for CS 18200 (Undergraduate Foundations of Computer Science with Professor Greg Frederickson
