Mr. Shashwat Agrawal is a PhD candidate at Department of Computer Science and Engineering, IIT Delhi. His research focuses on the theoretical implications of quantum computation on cryptography. On one hand, he is motivated to analyze problems relevant to build cryptographic schemes and believed so far to be hard to solve even for quantum algorithms. On the other hand, he is fascinated by the potential of quantum algorithms to perform novel cryptographic tasks, which seem unprecedented to achieve using classical computing.
Shashwat holds a BS-MS in mathematics and scientific computing from IIT Kanpur, where he was awarded Bhagwan Das Sanghi Memorial Gold Medal for best graduating student in Mathematics. He furthered his education with an MS in Computer Science from the University of California, San Diego, during which he explored the mathematical foundations of machine learning and served as a Teaching Assistant for courses in algorithm design and discrete mathematics.
As a Fulbright-Nehru Doctoral Research Fellow, Shashwat aims to analyze the fine-grained complexity of attacking numerous variants of the Learning with Errors problem which, could be useful for practically deploying encryption schemes and more advanced cryptographic primitives. Outside of his research, Shashwat is a practitioner and proponent of Sahaja Yoga meditation. He has also learnt tablā and violin and loves to explore the deep connection of Indian classical music with spirituality.