Darya Kaviani

daryakaviani@berkeley.edu

I am a third-year Ph.D. student at UC Berkeley, where I am advised by Raluca Ada Popa. I design systems that are secure, private, and efficient, especially in the context of AI and cryptographic systems.

I completed my B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and minor in Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley.

I am supported by the Amazon AI PhD Fellowship, am a co-organizer of the Berkeley Security Seminar, and am affiliated with the Berkeley Security Group and Sky Lab.

🔮 Opal: Private Memory for Personal AI
Darya Kaviani, Alp Eren Ozdarendeli, Jinhao Zhu, Yu Ding, Raluca Ada Popa Preprint

🌟 Vega: Low-Latency Zero-Knowledge Proofs over Existing Credentials
Darya Kaviani, Srinath Setty
IEEE S&P 2026 (to appear) Full Version Thread

🔏 Acumen: A Platform for Encrypted and Accountable Collaborative Editing
Ryan Cottone, Darya Kaviani, Conor Power, Will Giorza, Evelyn Koo, Natacha Crooks, Raluca Ada Popa
USENIX OSDI 2026 (to appear)

🍄 Myco: Unlocking Polylogarithmic Accesses in Metadata-Private Messaging
Darya Kaviani, Deevashwer Rathee, Bhargav Annem, Raluca Ada Popa
IEEE S&P 2025 Conference Proceedings Full Version Code Poster Thread

🦝 Ringtail: Practical Two-Round Signatures from Learning with Errors
Cecilia Boschini*, Darya Kaviani*, Russell W. F. Lai*, Giulio Malavolta*, Akira Takahashi*, Mehdi Tibouchi*
IEEE S&P 2025 Conference Proceeedings Full Version Code Poster Thread

⏳ Papercraft: Lattice-based Verifiable Delay Function Implemented
Michał Osadnik, Darya Kaviani, Valerio Cini, Russell W. F. Lai, Giulio Malavolta
IEEE S&P 2025 Conference Proceedings Full Version

🤝 It Actually Doesn't Feel Very Mutual:" How Technology Impacts the Values of Mutual Aid Groups in Practice
Tonya Nguyen, Darya Kaviani, Niloufar Salehi
ACM CHI 2025 Conference Proceeedings Full Version

🪶 Flock: A Framework for Deploying On-Demand Distributed Trust
Darya Kaviani*, Sijun Tan*, Pravein Govindan Kannan, Raluca Ada Popa
USENIX OSDI 2024 and Real World Crypto 2025 Conference Proceedings Full Version Code Artifact Eval Poster Blog Thread

🖼️ Bridging Action Frames: Instagram Infographics in U.S. Ethnic Movements
Darya Kaviani, Niloufar Salehi
ACM CSCW 2022 Conference Proceedings Thread

*equal first author

Google Systems Research Group, Sunnyvale, CA

Student Researcher (AI security)

Incoming (Summer 2026)

Microsoft Research Security Group, Redmond, WA

Research Intern

May 2025 – Aug. 2025

Bocconi University Cryptography Group, Milan, Italy

Visiting Researcher

May 2024 – Aug. 2024

UC Berkeley Sky Lab, Berkeley, CA

PhD Student

Aug. 2023 – Present

Opyn (Acquired by Coinbase), San Francisco, CA

Software Engineer

May 2022 – Oct. 2022

Facebook Community Help Team, Menlo Park, CA

Software Engineering Intern

June – Aug. 2021

Facebook, Menlo Park, CA

Facebook University Engineering Intern

June – Aug. 2020

I present cybersecurity talks to industry executives and leaders.

The Deployment Dilemma: Merits & Challenges of Deploying MPC
Yehuda Lindell (Head of Cryptography), Coinbase; David Cook (Engineer), Tim Geoghegan (Engineer), Sarah Gran (VP Communications), Internet Security Research Group; Rolfe Schmidt (Research Engineer), Ehren Kret (CTO), Signal; Darya Kaviani (Ph.D. Student), Prof. Raluca Ada Popa, UC Berkeley Security Group**

**alphabetical by institution

CS 161: Computer Security
Spring 2026, Graduate Student Instructor

CS 171: Introduction to Cryptography
Spring 2024, Graduate Student Instructor

CS 61C: Computer Architecture
Spring 2021, Computer Science Mentor

CS 61B: Data Structures
Spring 2021, Computer Science Mentor
Fall 2020, Computer Science Mentor
Summer 2020, Academic Intern

Amazon AI PhD Fellowship
NSF Graduate Research Fellowship HM
Accel Scholars
Interact Fellowship
Paradigm Fellowship
Center for Society, Technology & Policy Fellowship
Berkeley EECS Honors Program

Contribute real-world MPC deployments to our MPC Deployments Dashboard to help track practical applications. I co-organize the Berkeley Security Seminar, so if you are in town and would like to give a talk, please reach out!

When I'm not doing research, you'll find me learning how to boulder (V4/5) 🧗‍♀️, hunting for the perfect matcha 🍵 @daryadrinksmatcha, hiking 🥾, or tending to my plant collection 🪴.