Victor Shoup
Research Scientist at New York University
New York, New York, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolVictor Shoup is a research scientist and cryptographer with 13+ years of industry experience and a deep academic pedigree (PhD, University of Wisconsin–Madison) who has held long-term faculty and research roles at NYU and IBM Research. He combines foundational cryptographic research with applied systems work, having led research efforts at DFINITY, Offchain Labs, and now Category Labs focused on secure distributed computation and blockchain. His open-source contributions include experimental core work on HElib—advancing homomorphic encryption implementations and exploring Peikert’s “powerful” basis—which signals hands-on expertise in low-level number theory and cryptographic engineering. Victor’s career blends academic leadership (Professor Emeritus) with product-facing research roles, enabling transitions from theory to deployable systems. Based in New York, he is known for tackling hard math-driven problems and introducing practical optimizations that bridge cryptographic theory and real-world secure computation.
13 years of coding experience
19 years of employment as a software developer
Doctor of Philosophy - PhD Computer Science, Doctor of Philosophy - PhD Computer Science at University of Wisconsin-MadisonBachelor of Science - BS Mathematics and Computer Science, Bachelor of Science - BS Mathematics and Computer Science at University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire
Github Skills (5)
number-theory10
cryptography10
cprogramming-language9
homomorphic-encryption9
c-language9
Programming languages (3)
Github contributions (5)
homenc/HElib
Apr 2013 - Dec 2020
HElib is an open-source software library that implements homomorphic encryption. It supports the BGV scheme with bootstrapping and the Approximate Number CKKS scheme. HElib also includes optimizations for efficient homomorphic evaluation, focusing on effective use of ciphertext packing techniques and on the Gentry-Halevi-Smart optimizations.
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:378 commits, 4 PRs, 63 pushes in 7 years 9 months
Contributions summary:Victor's commits focus on experimental basis exploration within the HElib library, specifically investigating Peikert's "powerful" basis. The user introduces new components to test these techniques, including new source files like `powerful.cpp`, and modifies existing files related to number theory and core encryption functions, such as `NumbTh.cpp`, and `DoubleCRT.cpp`. These changes indicate a focus on the core cryptographic implementations, alongside testing.
crypto-libraryoptimizationscryptanalysisencryption-libraryfhe
libntl/ntl
Dec 2020 - Jun 2021
Contributions:3 releases, 1 review, 15 commits in 5 months
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