About

I am a fifth-year PhD student at MIT, where I am advised by Vinod Vaikuntanathan. I’m interested in theoretical computer science, particularly cryptography and its connections to statistics and machine learning. I am supported by an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship.

Before MIT, I was a software engineer at Google (YouTube). Prior to that, I received a BA in mathematics from Harvard University. As an undergraduate, I attended the DIMACS REU (under Eric Allender’s mentorship) and Ken Ono’s number theory REU (under his and John Duncan’s mentorship). I also interned in industry at Facebook, Jane Street, and most recently at NTT Research.

Here is my (likely outdated) CV.

Recent News

Manuscripts

Authors are listed in alphabetical order of last name, as is the convention in my field.

Oblivious Defense in ML Models: Backdoor Removal without Detection
Shafi Goldwasser, Jonathan Shafer, NV, Vinod Vaikuntanathan
[Paper]

Symmetric Perceptrons, Number Partitioning and Lattices
NV, Vinod Vaikuntanathan

Publications

Indistinguishability Obfuscation from Bilinear Maps and LPN Variants
Seyoon Ragavan, NV, Vinod Vaikuntanathan
TCC 2024
[Paper]

Sparse Linear Regression and Lattice Problems
Aparna Gupte, NV, Vinod Vaikuntanathan
TCC 2024
[Paper]

Memory Checking Requires Logarithmic Overhead
Elette Boyle, Ilan Komargodski, NV
STOC 2024
[ePrint] [ECCC] [Video at CMU]

MacORAMa: Optimal Oblivious RAM with Integrity
Surya Mathialagan, NV
Crypto 2023
[Paper]

Continuous LWE is as Hard as LWE & Applications to Learning Gaussian Mixtures
Aparna Gupte, NV, Vinod Vaikuntanathan
FOCS 2022
[arXiv] [ePrint] [Video at CMU] [Video at FOCS] [Video at Simons]

Average-case Hardness of NP and PH from Worst-case Fine-grained Assumptions
Lijie Chen, Shuichi Hirahara, NV
ITCS 2022
[Paper] [Video]

The Non-hardness of Approximating Circuit Size
Eric Allender, Rahul Ilango, NV
CSR 2019
Invited to Special Issue of Theory of Computing Systems
[Paper]

Moonshine for All Finite Groups
Samuel DeHority, Xavier Gonzalez, NV, Roger Van Peski
Research in the Mathematical Sciences
[Paper]