Areas of professional interest

My professional interests are Applied Cryptography, Cybersecurity and Secure HW/SW Systems Development.

Professional Experience

Chainmasons

From 2017 to 2020, I worked in the cryptocurrency sector in a small team named Chainmasons. Its aim was to create a new untraceable coin. The main features of this cryptocurrency were a new ASIC-resistant mining algorithm and a zero-knowledge transaction system without trusted setup. The transaction protocol allowed any user to verify the correctness of a transaction without gaining information about the amounts or the users involved.

My work consisted of the design and development of the secure and confidential money transaction system, implementing algorithms developed by the team’s researchers, and returning feedback to researchers on protocol development.

At the beginning of 2020, I left the team after finishing my work.

From this experience, I learned to work remotely with a team of people from different nations, experts in various disciplines, to implement non-standard algorithms with mutual feedbacks with the research team that developed them.

University of Pisa

From September 2023, I work as a researcher at the Electronic Systems Laboratory of the University of Pisa. I am continuing my thesis work by developing a complete hardware accelerator for the post-quantum cryptographic algorithm Kyber. I published on IEEE access CRYPHTOR, an hardware acccelerator for Kyber and Dilithium for RISC-V platform. Currently I’m working on a compact accelerator for Kyber.

Academic Education

Scientific High School: Liceo Scientifico P.S. Mancini of Avellino

I attended high school at Liceo Scientifico P.S. Mancini of Avellino which gave me a solid scientific foundation and an Italian cultural background.

Extra activities:
Second year: Cinematography and Film Scripting course Third year: a cycle of seminars on relation between Mathematics and Philosophy Fourth year: cycle of seminars on modern Physic Fifth year: Festival of Philosophy in Magna Grecia, a four-day event with lessons and laboratories about Philosophy

Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science at the University of Pisa

I studied Computer Science at the University of Pisa. Here, I acquired a solid background in theoretical computer science and mathematics, learned programming and software development, and became interested in Cryptography.

Key Courses:
Cryptography, Cybersecurity, Computability and Complexity, Programming Experiences

My Bachelor’s thesis was about the consensus protocol of the Algorand blockchain. It analyzes the protocol and its design choices and comments on them in comparison with the landscape of consensus algorithms at the time.

Master’s Degree in Cybersecurity at the University of Pisa

During the COVID-19 pandemic, I decided to go back to university to acquire a broader education about Cybersecurity, and then I enrolled in the new master’s degree course in Cybersecurity at the University of Pisa.

The master program covered various aspects of security, such as software, hardware, networking, organizational and legal, penetration testing, and supply chain. All courses and exams were in English. Almost every course included laboratory activities and practical projects, frequently in groups, in which I improved my teamwork skills. Here, I started to learn about hardware design and embedded systems.

During the master’s course, I attended language courses provided by the university’s linguistic center. I studied English from B2.1 to C1.1 level and French from A1 to A2 level.

My master thesis consists of porting the reference code of the recently standardized Kyber and Di lithium post-quantum encryption algorithms to Risc-V, and the design and implementation on FPGA of an accelerator for polynomial operations. The accelerator was developed using the SystemVerilog language and the Vivado suite, targeting resource-limited devices.

Self Learning

Already during university, I invested heavily in independent training, very focused on specific arguments and oriented towards practice, reading many technical books, implementing algorithms and protocols, and experimenting with the knowledge acquired.

My training in Cryptography includes the study of the mathematical background, theoretical cryptography, applied cryptography, and secure implementation. All the cryptographic algorithms that I have implemented for learning purposes since 2014 are available on GitHub.

On the Software Development side, I remain updated with the latest versions of the languages that I use, and the most modern techniques, patterns, and tools.

Other areas of interest

I’m passionate about technology and computer science; in addition to my field of expertise, I am curious about developments in other areas of Computer Science such as theoretical computer science, AI and non-classic computational models.

Skills

Languages:
Italian (mother tongue), English (B2), French (A2)

Programming Languages:
Advanced: C/C++, Java, Python
Intermediate: C#, F#, Rust, Ocaml
Basic: Go, Typescript
Hardware Description Languages:
Verilog/SystemVerilog

Programming skills:
Software Design, Secure Coding, Library/Framework Design, Software Optimization

Cryptography:
Applied Cryptography, Cryptographic Algorithms and Protocols HW/SW implementation, Blockchain

Platforms:
macOS, Linux, Windows

Tools:
Xcode, Jetbrains, Vivado, Questasim, Visual Studio Code

Culture

I believe that a broad perspective on the world is an important quality today. For this reason, I read a lot of books on all kinds of subjects and newspapers from around the world. In particular, I like to read books about science, the basis of modern thinking, philosophy, and history, to understand our society.

I am a tea lover. Tea is a drink that is widespread all over the world and deeply rooted in the cultures of the countries where it is drunk, cultures that I love to explore.

I have been passionate about cinema and music since high school age. I studied electric bass at a private music school and double bass at the Domenico Cimarosa Conservatory during my high school years, and I performed with various bands in clubs and local festivals.