Postdoc at Cambridge · Belfort Labs
Alexander Viand
I am a postdoctoral researcher in the Cambridge Compiler Lab at the University of Cambridge in addition to my work at Belfort Labs. I develop compilers, tools and systems that make privacy-preserving computation more practical and accessible. My research spans fully homomorphic encryption, secure multi-party computation and zero-knowledge proofs, with a focus on abstractions and automation that help non-experts use these technologies. I am also interested in usable security and privacy, and how these technologies interact with society.
I received my PhD from ETH Zürich in May 2023, where I was a doctoral student and research assistant in the Applied Cryptography Group and a member of the Privacy Preserving Systems Lab. I also received my MSc and BSc in Computer Science from ETH Zürich. During my PhD, I visited Tobias Grosser at the University of Edinburgh and Dawn Song at UC Berkeley. Before my current roles, I was a research scientist in the Privacy Technologies Research group at Intel Labs from 2023 to 2025.
Selected Publications:
Nikolay Avramov, Hidde Lycklama, Alexander Viand, Anwar Hithnawi
Preprint, arXiv:2609.11841
Asra Ali, Jaeho Choi, Bryant Gipson, Shruthi Gorantala, Jeremy Kun, Wouter Legiest, Lawrence Lim, Alexander Viand, Meron Zerihun Demissie, Hongren Zheng
Preprint, arXiv:2508.11095
DPolicy: Managing Privacy Risks Across Multiple Releases with Differential Privacy
Paper Slides GithubNicolas Küchler, Alexander Viand, Hidde Lycklama, Anwar Hithnawi
IEEE Security and Privacy (Oakland) 2025.
Hidde Lycklama*, Alexander Viand*, Nikolay Avramov, Nicolas Küchler, Anwar Hithnawi
Preprint, arXiv:2409.12055
Nicolas Küchler, Emanuel Opel, Hidde Lycklama, Alexander Viand, Anwar Hithnawi
IEEE Security and Privacy (Oakland) 2024.
Christian Knabenhans*, Alexander Viand*, Antonio Merino-Gallardo, Anwar Hithnawi
Workshop on Encrypted Computing & Applied Homomorphic Cryptography (WAHC '24)
Hidde Lycklama*, Lukas Burkhalter*, Alexander Viand, Nicolas Küchler, Anwar Hithnawi
IEEE Security and Privacy (Oakland) 2023.
Hidde Lycklama, Nicolas Küchler, Alexander Viand, Emanuel Opel, Lukas Burkhalter, Anwar Hithnawi
ML Safety Workshop at NeurIPS 2022
Alberto Ibarrondo, Alexander Viand
Workshop on Encrypted Computing & Applied Homomorphic Cryptography (WAHC '21).
Travis Morrison, Bijeeta Pal, Sarah Scheffler, Alexander Viand
In "Protecting Privacy through Homomorphic Encryption" K. Lauter, W. Dai, and K. Laine, editors. Springer, 2021.
Lukas Burkhalter*, Nicolas Küchler*, Alexander Viand, Hossein Shafagh, Anwar Hithnawi
USENIX OSDI 2021.
Alexander Viand, Patrick Jattke, Anwar Hithnawi
IEEE Security and Privacy (Oakland) 2021.
TimeCrypt: Encrypted Data Stream Processing at Scale with Cryptographic Access Control.
Paper Slides Github Website VideoLukas Burkhalter, Anwar Hithnawi, Alexander Viand, Hossein Shafagh, Sylvia Ratnasamy
USENIX NSDI 2020.
Lukas Burkhalter, Alexander Viand, Matthias Lei, Hossein Shafagh, Anwar Hithnawi
Privacy Preserving Machine Learning Workshop (PPML), 2019.
Alexander Viand, Hossein Shafagh
Workshop on Encrypted Computing & Applied Homomorphic Cryptography (WAHC '18). Toronto, Canada,
Talks:
FHE Development Ecosystem: Tools, Compilers & Challenges.
- Stanford, Security Seminar
- UC Berkeley, NetSys Seminar
- Intel Labs
- Nvidia, FHE - Research Team
- FHE.org Meetup, [Video,Slides]
HECO: Automatic Code Optimizations for Efficient Fully Homomorphic Encryption.
- FHE.org conference, Trondheim, Norway [Slides]
- Protocol Labs, Research Seminar [Video]
- SRC Techcon
Building an End-to-End Toolchain for Fully Homomorphic Encryption with MLIR.
Usable FHE: Opportunities & Challenges.
- UC Berkeley, Security Seminar
- UC San Diego
- Stanford, Security Seminar
Service
Program committees
- IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (S&P): 2026, 2027
- USENIX Security Symposium: 2026, 2027
- IEEE European Symposium on Security and Privacy (EuroS&P): 2024
- The Web Conference (WWW): 2020
Conference reviewing
- ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAccT): 2027
- ACM SIGPLAN Symposium on Principles of Programming Languages (POPL): 2026 (external reviewer)
- International Conference on Compiler Construction (CC): 2026 (external reviewer)
- ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation (PLDI): 2023 (external reviewer)
- ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications (OOPSLA): 2022 (external reviewer)
- IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (S&P): 2022 (external reviewer)
Journal reviewing
- Journal of Cryptology: 2022–2025
Departmental service
- Treasurer, ETH Zürich Scientific Staff Association: 2019–2022
- President, Computer Science Scientific Staff Association, ETH Zürich: 2018–2021
- Faculty Hiring Committee, Department of Computer Science, ETH Zürich: 2020
- Chair, Teaching Commission, Department of Computer Science, ETH Zürich: 2018–2019