Varun Madathil

Assistant Professor / New Jersey Institute of Technology

Applied cryptography

Research

I am interested in designing cryptographic protocols that provide privacy, anonymity, and security guarantees while still allowing useful computation

Theme 01

Private Data Analytics

Research question

How can we compute useful information from sensitive data without revealing the individual data itself?

Many useful computations require combining sensitive data contributed by multiple users or organizations. I am interested in cryptographic techniques that enable aggregate statistics and other useful computations while limiting what is revealed about individual inputs. This includes secure aggregation, private computation, and applications such as federated learning.

Selected work

  1. TACITA: Threshold Aggregation without Client Interaction

    CCS / 2026

Theme 02

Private and Anonymous Systems

Research question

How can users interact with a public or distributed system without revealing who they are or what they are doing?

Many systems reveal information simply through participation: who communicates with whom, who performs a transaction, or which user retrieves a message. I study cryptographic protocols that provide strong privacy and anonymity guarantees in settings such as blockchains, communication systems, private retrieval, and decentralized applications.

Selected work

  1. PriFHEte: Achieving Full-Privacy in Account-based Cryptocurrencies is Possible

    ASIACRYPT / 2025

  2. HomeRun: High-efficiency Oblivious Message Retrieval, Unrestricted

    CCS / 2024

  3. Jäger: Automated Telephone Call Traceback

    CCS / 2024

  4. Private Signaling

    USENIX Security / 2022

Theme 03

Cryptographic Protocols

Research question

What new cryptographic tools make private computation more efficient or provide stronger security guarantees?

I also work on the design and analysis of cryptographic protocols and primitives that enable private computation.

Selected work

  1. Round-Optimal Compiler for Semi-Honest to Malicious Oblivious Transfer via CIH

    IACR CiC / 2025

  2. From Privacy-Only to Simulatable OT: Black-Box, Round-Optimal, Information-theoretic

    ITC / 2022

  3. A Linear Operator Framework for Polynomial Divisions in Cryptography

    AsiaCCS / 2026