New York, New York, United States
I do security and cryptography research at MongoDB Research. Sometimes, I write papers about it. See https://zacharyespiritu.com/ for more. [Don't message me on LinkedIn—email me instead! I'm not looking for jobs!]
Working with the Cryptography Research Group in MongoDB Research, where we create, publish, and deploy cutting-edge research in encrypted search and database security. My work here has led to multiple published papers in various top venues and has impacted the design of and messaging around various cryptographic and non-cryptographic products at MongoDB.
Worked on Linux platform security on-prem and in the cloud.
Researched development of and attacks on expressive, efficient structured encryption (STE) schemes; advised by Roberto Tamassia.
Designed cryptographic protocols and systems to support public health initiatives; advised by Seny Kamara.
Hired, trained, and directly managed 54 undergraduate and graduate TAs for Software Security and Exploitation (2021), Computer Systems Security (2019, 2020, 2021), Design and Implementation of Programming Languages (2019), and Accelerated Intro to CS (2018). Specific accomplishments include: • Automated grading and project setup via Bash scripts spawning Linux Docker containers in Google Compute Engine, saving 250 staff hours in total and $4k/year in department budget. • Authored new project for security course on using untrusted servers for secure, efficient file storage and sharing. Project scored average student evals of 4.61 / 5.00 in first year (compared to 4.21 / 5.00 of previous version of project). • Modernized security course written assignments by writing +30 new problems covering cryptography, web security, networks, data compression, protocol vulnerability analysis. • Delivered 9 out of 22 main lectures for Spring 2021 offering of computer security course, authored and led 30+ discussion sections, and held 300+ hours of office hours and discussion sections across all courses. • Developed new course materials and teaching tools; expanded documentation on internal running practices. (Example documentation at http://cs.brown.edu/~zespirit/cs166-uta-manual.pdf.) Additional teaching assistant positions: Design and Implementation of Programming Languages (Fall 2019), Introduction to Scientific Computing and Problem Solving (Spring 2018) A Data-Centric Introduction to Programming (Fall 2017).
Steered the hiring and training of 1200+ TAs over 56 Computer Science courses by managing 150+ HTAs as dotted-line reports. Contributions include: • Spearheaded several department-wide initiatives, including (1) increasing all TAs’ pay by 25% over 2 years; (2) discovering 4 major security vulnerabilities in CS courses’ grading infrastructure on Linux and GitHub; and (3) launched student panel series designed for sophomore and junior students to gain greater clarity on their course choices and internship search w/ +100 attendees per event. • Released GrblGrader, a modular feedback delivery and grading management system in JavaScript. Generates 1000 student impressions across 8 CS courses each year. • Authored Bash and Python scripts and new organizational processes to reduce management workload by 300 hours, yielding department savings of $5k/year.
On-call technical staff providing support and maintenance for Linux systems in the department used by students, teaching assistants, and faculty.