Rahul Satish

I was drawn to cryptography by a simple but powerful realization: mathematics can protect people. What began as an interest in theory evolved into a persistent question, do our security proofs actually matter in practice? That question led me to secure multiparty computation and privacy enhancing technologies. My PhD research focuses on designing protocols that are not only rigorously proven but realistically deployable. I’m motivated by the idea that collaborative computation should not require sacrificing privacy, and I work toward making that vision practical at scale. My current focus is on structured MPC with realistic trust assumptions, increasingly bridging formal guarantees and real-world systems.

Outside research, I spend much of my time walking through cities with a camera in hand. Having lived and worked across Tel Aviv, Copenhagen, Goa, Bangalore, and Tokyo, I’ve come to appreciate how different places shape the way people build, move, and interact. Photography, especially of architecture and street scenes, has trained me to pay attention to details, light falling on concrete, repeating patterns in facades, the quiet logic behind infrastructure. It’s less about capturing perfection and more about noticing structure, tension, and human context. I’m deeply interested in privacy adoption and education, and I hope to connect the theoretical work I do with practical problems that genuinely matter to people.