Empowering crypto innovation through open-source R&D

Dragoș Rotaru is a cryptography researcher specializing in multi-party computation (MPC), zero knowledge proofs and privacy preserving machine learning. His research focuses on MPC protocols and transforming various algorithms into their threshold versions. 

Supervised by Professor Nigel Smart, Dragoș obtained a Ph.D. in Cryptography from University of Bristol.

Duc V. Le is a staff research engineer at Circle. Previously, he was a staff research scientist at Visa Research and a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bern with Prof. Christian Cachin. His research focuses on applied cryptography, privacy-enhancing technologies, and distributed systems security, with specific expertise in zero-knowledge proofs, blockchain privacy, payment channels, and ring signatures. 

He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Purdue University, advised by Prof. Aniket Kate and Prof. Mikhail Atallah.

Gordon Liao is the Chief Economist and Head of Research at Circle. He is also a Research Fellow at the Cornell Fintech Initiative and a co-chair of the National Association for Business Economics Finance Roundtable. Gordon’s career has encompassed diverse areas within finance and technology, including fixed income relative value trading at the Harvard endowment, machine learning and AI at Kensho, policy advising at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, and leading research and development in decentralized finance and tokenization. His research contributions have been published in respected journals such as the Review of Financial Studies and Journal of Financial Economics. 

Gordon holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University. He received his Bachelor’s degree in Applied Mathematics from Harvard College.

Research Focus: Financial Economics and Mechanism Design

Mira Belenkiy is a cryptographer with extensive experience in blockchain, zero-knowledge proofs, and key management. She developed the original Circle USDC smart contracts and cold storage system. She has worked on anonymous credentials, zero-knowledge proofs, and open quantum safe SSH. Additionally, she has authored multiple publications on zero-knowledge proofs and secure authentication systems.

Mira holds a Ph.D. in Cryptography from Brown University.

Research Focus: Cryptography, Anonymous Credentials, Zero-Knowledge, and Smart Contracts

Preston Vander Vos is a researcher at Circle. His work focuses on cryptocurrency markets, decentralized finance, and distributed systems. Before joining Circle, he held data and product roles at Chainalysis, Paradigm, and BitMEX, after starting his career in derivatives trading at RBC Capital Markets. Additionally, he’s conducted consensus research in collaboration with Mysten Labs.

Preston received his M.Sc. in Information Security from University College London and his B.S. in Business Administration from Carnegie Mellon University.

Research Focus: Cryptocurrency Markets, DeFi, and Distributed Systems.

Ziming is a Data Scientist at Circle. His work focuses on onchain data analytics. Before joining Circle, he was a Quantitative Researcher at Neo Ivy Capital Management.

Ziming holds a Master of Financial Engineering degree from Cornell University.

Research Focus: Data Science

Dr. Boneh is a Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University where he heads the applied cryptography group and co-directs the Center for Blockchain Research. Dr. Boneh's research focuses on applications of cryptography to blockchains and to computer security. He is the author of over 200 publications in the field, and is a recipient of the 2014 ACM prize and the 2013 Godel prize. In 2016 he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering.