Eli Goldin

I am a fourth year PhD student studying cryptography at NYU. I am advised by Marshall Ball and Yevgeniy Dodis.

My interests are split between classical and quantum cryptography.

My classical research mainly aims to answer the question: "how do you do cryptography when the cryptographers are out to get you?" Security practitioners often use cryptographic primitives in a black-box manner. But sometimes, these black-boxes are themselves malicious. This may be caused by a backdoor inserted by some third party or just an unseen attack. I care about provably helping practitioners stuck in such a hopeless situation recover some security.

In the quantum setting, my research focuses on the foundations of quantum cryptography. I care about fundamentally quantum primitives, which require quantum computers to even execute. I am interested in the necessary assumptions for achieving quantum cryptography, and mapping out the relationships between quantum primitives. I have a particular interest in the "MicroCrypt" setting, where one may hope to achieve useful cryptoraphy using quantum computers even if one-way functions and all of classical cryptography does not exist.

I am also generally interested in the theory of cryptography, in particular randomness extraction and quantum cryptography.

I have a Erdős-Bacon number of 5.

Publications | Teaching | Game Dev | Contact

Publications

Papers are presented in reverse chronological order. Authors on all papers are in alphabetical order.

Anamorphic-Resistant Encryption; Or Why the Encryption Debate is Still Alive [pdf]
Yevgeniy Dodis, Eli Goldin
Manuscript

CountCrypt: Quantum Cryptography between QCMA and PP [pdf]
Eli Goldin, Tomoyuki Morimae, Saachi Mutreja, Takashi Yamakawa
Manuscript

Random Oracle Combiners: the Merkle-Damgard Way
Yevgeniy Dodis, Eli Goldin, Peter Hall
EUROCRYPT 2025

A Meta-Complexity Characterization of Quantum Cryptography [pdf]
Bruno Cavalar, Eli Goldin, Matthew Gray, Peter Hall
EUROCRYPT 2025

On the Computational Hardness of Quantum One-Wayness [pdf]
Bruno Cavalar, Eli Goldin, Matthew Gray, Peter Hall, Yanyi Liu, Angelos Pelecanos
Quantum 9

On Central Primitives for Quantum Cryptography with Classical Communication [pdf]
Kai-Min Chung, Eli Goldin, Matthew Gray
CRYPTO 2024

Immunizing Backdoor PRGs [pdf][slides]
Marshall Ball, Yevgeniy Dodis, Eli Goldin
TCC 2023

Extracting Randomness from Samplable Distributions, Revisited [pdf] [slides]
Marshall Ball, Dana Dachman-Soled, Eli Goldin, Saachi Mutreja
FOCS 2023, Invited talk at ITC 2024

Random Oracle Combiners: Breaking the Concatenation Barrier for Collision-Resistance [pdf] [slides]
Yevgeniy Dodis, Niels Ferguson, Eli Goldin, Peter Hall, Krzysztof Pietrzak
CRYPTO 2023

Rotatable Zero Knowledge Sets: Post Commpromise Secure Auditable Dictionaries with Appliation to Key Transparency [pdf] [slides]
Brian Chen, Yevgeniy Dodis, Esha Ghosh, Eli Goldin, Balachandar Kesavan, Antonio Marcedone, Merry Ember Mou
ASIACRYPT 2022

From discrete-log to lattices: maybe the real lessons were our broken schemes along the way? [pdf] [talk]
Alex Bienstock, Allison Bishop, Eli Goldin, Garrison Grogan, Victor Lecomte
CFAIL 2020

Teaching

Fall 2024: Basic Algorithms (NYU CSCI-UA 310 - taught by Rotem Oshman)

Fall 2023, Spring 2024, Spring 2025: Fundamental Algorithms (NYU CSCI-GA 1170 - taught by Yevgeniy Dodis)

Fall 2022: Basic Algorithms (NYU CSCI-UA 310 - taught by Marshall Ball and Oded Regev)

Spring 2022: Fundamental Algorithms (NYU CSCI-GA 1170 - taught by Chee Yap)

Spring 2021: Advanced Algorithms (Columbia COMS 4995-8 - taught by Alexandr Andoni)

Fall 2020: Computer Science Theory (Columbia COMS 3261 - taught by Tal Malkin)

Spring 2020: Computer Science Theory (Columbia COMS 3261 - taught by Mihalis Yannakakis)

Fall 2019: Intro to Cryptography (Columbia COMS 4261 - taught by Tal Malkin)

Fall 2018, Spring 2019: Advanced Programming (Columbia COMS 3157 - taught by Jae Woo Lee)

Game Dev
I make video games in my free time. Here are some projects I've worked on:

UPCOMING: BoxSim, a 3d puzzle platformer. In BoxSim, think outside the box while inside of a box that's inside of a box. Find creative solutions to puzzles. Navigate platforming challenges. Pick up and put down boxes. Will you escape, or will you spend the rest of your life inside the box?

My biggest project, Herman Electro: Explore six puzzle-packed floors and help Herman and his friends reach the outside world. A circuit-based puzzle roguelike. Available on Steam!

Spooky Caverns: With a ghost hot on your heels in the Spooky Caverns, your chances of escape are slim. You'll need to run to the right, pick up powerful items, and find enough keys to unlock a portal out of the depths. A Spooky 2D Jam '23 entry.

Become Tree: start as a small tree, grow your roots, and become a much bigger tree. A Global Game Jam 2023 entry.

Time to Work: a story about time travel and mundane mistakes.

Date at the Museuem: a two-player game where you predict how your partner would respond to a prompt.

Synesthesia Spectrum: a subaquatic race to the finish. Flip gravity and mess with your opponent.

Contact Info
Email: first-name . last-name (at) nyu.edu;
Address:

Dept. of Computer Science

New York University

251 Mercer St.

Office #: WWH 410

New York, NY 10012