Assistant Professor of ECE · University of Miami · MIT PhD · Serial Founder
Trust and security in an agentic world.
NEWS: Starting in Fall 2026, I’m joining the University of Miami as an Assistant Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering.
My background sits between research and company-building: at MIT, my doctoral work helped establish how blockchains could work with sensitive data without exposing it; as a founder, I helped turn those ideas into production networks, raised high eight-figure funding, and built systems securing billions in onchain value. At Miami, I’ll focus on the next hard problem: the trust layer for a world where AI agents interact with other agents.
Research Agenda
As software shifts from humans clicking buttons to agents acting through tools, many web security assumptions stop fitting. Agents will mix private data with untrusted content, call APIs (and pay for them), change records, and coordinate with other agents. I want to study the trust layer around those systems.
Agent protocols
When agents represent different users, companies, or institutions, how should they authenticate intent, delegate authority, and leave evidence after a transaction? The goal is cooperation without assuming the other agent is benign.
Data boundaries
Agents collapse boundaries between internal data, web data, retrieved context, memory, and tool output. That makes provenance, consent, poisoning, leakage, and access control central security questions rather than documentation details.
Delegation and control
Agents will use our accounts, data, and permissions to act on our behalf. I want to understand when they overstep, how easily they can be manipulated by people or other agents, and what control users and organizations need before trusting them with real authority.
Open and Decentralized AI
Open models and decentralized infrastructure can make AI more inspectable and less concentrated. The hard part is making that true in practice: tracking data and model lineage, avoiding benchmark theater, and adding privacy and accountability without recreating closed systems under another name.
I am looking for proven self-starters with clear evidence of excellence: people who have built things, written strong papers, found important problems, or pushed projects forward without waiting for permission. I am considering PhD students, postdocs, visiting students, interns, and research collaborators.
If this area feels close to your work, reach out. PhD applicants should also apply through the UM College of Engineering and list me as a potential advisor.
Selected work
I spent a decade working on systems that compute, coordinate, and transact without exposing the data underneath.
MIT · Enigma
At MIT, I worked on using blockchains for access control and as a settlement layer for private computation. I co-authored the first proposal for confidential smart contracts, combining secure MPC with blockchains so programs could run on private data and publish verifiable results. The work has been cited thousands of times.
Enigma
I founded Enigma to take that research out of the lab. The project raised $45M and became the first serious attempt to bring secure computation into public blockchain systems.
Secret Network · SCRT Labs
I led the launch of Secret Network, the first production network with encrypted smart-contract inputs, outputs, and state. At its peak, the network reached unicorn-scale market value, secured billions in onchain value, and later announced a $400M ecosystem initiative for builders.
Secret Network · Quentin Tarantino · Kevin Smith
The first private DeFi projects launched on Secret Network. I also had the chance to work directly with Quentin Tarantino on his unseen Pulp Fiction material, and with Kevin Smith on KillRoy Was Here, one of the first full-length feature films released through an open, access-controlled digital drop.
Fhenix
I founded Fhenix to bring fully homomorphic encryption to production, focusing on Web3 use cases. The company has raised roughly $25M and is building secure infrastructure for institutions and developers working with high-value onchain assets.
MIT
After several years building companies, I returned to complete my PhD at MIT and defended my dissertation in 2024, Secure Computation in Decentralized Systems, on confidential and verifiable systems for open networks, covering use-cases such as AI, blockchains and authentication.
Selected publications
Media
Coverage, interviews, and public talks across technology, finance, and culture, in English and Hebrew.