Almashaqbeh, Ghada

Ghada Almashaqbeh

Assistant Professor, School of Computing

Email ghada@uconn.edu
Phone (860) 486-8136
Mailing Address University of Connecticut 371 Fairfield Way, Unit 4155 Storrs, CT 06269-4155
Campus Storrs
Link Affiliation Website
Google Scholar Link

Brief Bio

I am an assistant professor in the School of Computing at UConn. I am also affiliated with the Connecticut Advanced Computing Center (CACC) and the Engineering for Human Rights Initiative. Before joining UConn, I spent a while exploring the entrepreneurship world. I cofounded CacheCash, a startup that came out of my PhD thesis, and I was a Cryptographer at NuCypher. Now, I am a scientific advisor at Sunscreen and the Melon, a 2023 Foresight Institute fellow, and a 2023 TLDR fellow at Uniswap Foundation.

I received my PhD in Computer Science from Columbia University in 2019, where I was a member of the Cryptography Lab and the Data Science Institute. During the PhD, I was fortunate to have Allison Bishop and Tal Malkin as my advisors.

My research interests cover cryptography, computer systems security, and privacy, with a focus on blockchain-based systems and distributed cryptographic protocols. My research is supported by NSF, Protocol Labs, Uniswap Foundation, and UConn Research Excellence Award.

  • Secure performance boosters for Web 3.0: Develop secure sidechain-based frameworks for boosting performance and improving scalability of Web 3.0 applications, in particular the paradigm of blockchain-based resource markets and AMMs. This is in addition to laying down foundations of modular provable security for these systems. More about our sidechain-based performance booster framework, chainBoost, can be found in our (paper, EuroS&P 2024) and (paper). We further develop competitive online policies for collateral management in layer-two protocols and their applications that can be found in our (paper, AFT 2024).
  • Private computing for blockchains: Build a privacy-preserving smart contract (PPSC) scheme using fully homomorphic encryption and non-interactive zero knowledge proofs. More about our PPSC framework can be found in our (paper, EuroS&P 2023), and more about current private computing solutions for blockchains can be found in our (SoK paper, EuroS&P 2022).
  • Delegation of cryptographic capabilities: Build constructions for delegating cryptographic capabilities, such as digital signatures, that are timed, revocable and anonymous, and explore their applications to Web 3.0. More about acheiving this notion for proxy signatures can be found in our (paper, ISC 2024).
  • Basing cryptography on biochemical assumptions: Construct bounded-query memory devices, or consumable tokens, from proteins, and use them in various cryptographic applications such as digital lockers and bounded-execution programs. More about these biological consumable tokens, their security and applications, can be found in our (paper, Eurocrypt 2022). Also, for a comparison of the no-cloning principle of unclonable polymers and that of quantum computing, in terms of building unclonable cryptography, check our (paper, Secrypt 2023). In a more recent (paper, CSCML 2024), we show how consumable tokens can be used to contruct password-authenticated cryptography.
  • AnoFel: Supporting Anonymity for Privacy-Preserving Federated Learning   Preprint, G. Almashaqbeh and Z. Ghodsi, PETS 2025
  • Password-authenticated Cryptography from Consumable Tokens   Preprint, G. Almashaqbeh, CSCML 2024
  • Anonymous, Timed and Revocable Proxy Signatures   Preprint, G. Almashaqbeh and A. Nitulescu, ISC 2024  Best Paper Award
  • Competitive Policies for Online Collateral Maintenance   Preprint, G. Almashaqbeh, S. Chen, and A. Russell, AFT 2024
  • chainBoost: A Secure Performance Booster for Blockchain-based Resource Markets   Preprint   Slides, Z. Motaqy, M. Najd, and G. Almashaqbeh, EuroS&P 2024
  • Unclonable Cryptography: A Tale of Two No-cloning Paradigms   Preprint   Slides, G. Almashaqbeh and R. Chatterjee, Secrypt 2023
  • smartFHE: Privacy-Preserving Smart Contracts from Fully Homomorphic Encryption   Preprint   Slides, R. Solomon, R. Weber, and G. Almashaqbeh, EuroS&P 2023   Coverage: zkMesh
  • Unclonable Polymers and Their Cryptographic Applications   Preprint   Slides, G. Almashaqbeh, R. Canetti, Y. Erlich, J. Gershoni. T. Malkin, I. Pe’er, A. Roitburd-Berman, and E. Tromer, Eurocrypt 2022
  • SoK: Privacy-Preserving Computing in the Blockchain Era   Preprint   Slides, G. Almashaqbeh and R. Solomon, EuroS&P 2022   Coverage: zkCapital, a16z Web3 Weekly
  • Gage MPC: Bypassing Residual Function Leakage for Non-Interactive MPC   Preprint   Slides, G. Almashaqbeh, F. Benhamouda, S. Han, D. Jaroslawicz, T. Malkin. A. Nicita, T. Rabin, A. Shah, and E. TromerPETS 2021   Coverage: zkCapital
  • Bet and Attack: Incentive Compatible Collaborative Attacks Using Smart Contracts   Preprint   Slides, Z. Motaqy, G. Almashaqbeh, B. Bahrak, and N. Yazdani, GameSec 2021
  • Rethinking Service Systems: A Path Towards Secure and Equitable Resource Markets   Preprint, G. Almashaqbeh, USENIX ;login: Magazine 2021
  • MicroCash: Practical Concurrent Processing of Micropayments   Preprint   Slides, G. Almashaqbeh, A. Bishop, and J. Cappos, FC 2020 (Financial Cryptography and Data Security)   Coverage: zkCapital
  • CAPnet: A Defense Against Cache Accounting Attacks on Content Distribution Networks   Preprint   Slides, G. Almashaqbeh, K. Kelley, A. Bishop, and J. Cappos, IEEE CNS 2019 (Communications and Network Security)
  • ABC: A Cryptocurrency-Focused Threat Modeling Framework   Preprint   Slides, G. Almashaqbeh, A. Bishop, and J. Cappos, CryBlock 2019
  • Implementing Support for Pointers to Private Data in a General-Purpose Secure Multi-Party Compiler   Preprint, Y. Zhang, M. Blanton, and G. Almashaqbeh, TOPS 2017 (ACM Transactions on Privacy and Security)
  • Secure Distributed Genome Analysis for GWAS and Sequence Comparison Computation, Y. Zhang, M. Blanton, and G. Almashaqbeh, BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making 2015