I am an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of Warwick, and a member of the Theory and Foundations group. I am a founding member of Warwick Quantum.

My work focuses on post-quantum proof systems. My interests include interactive proof systems and zero knowledge in general, post-quantum cryptography, quantum information, coding theory and computational complexity.

Previously, I was a postdoc at Boston University, hosted by Ran Canetti. I received my PhD from UC Berkeley, where I was advised by Alessandro Chiesa.

In summer 2018 I was an intern at IBM Research Zürich, working with Jan Camenisch.

I hold a master's degree in theoretical computer science from ETH Zürich, Switzerland, and a bachelor's degree in computer science from the University of Cambridge.

• On the necessity of collapsing
  Marcel Dall'Agnol and Nicholas Spooner
  Accepted to QCW 2022 and QIP 2023 (poster).

1. Speed-Stacking: Fast Sublinear Zero-Knowledge Proofs for Disjunctions
   Aarushi Goel, Mathias Hall-Andersen, Gabriel Kaptchuk and Nicholas Spooner
   Accepted to Eurocrypt 2023.
2. Proof-Carrying Data From Arithmetized Random Oracles
   Megan Chen, Alessandro Chiesa, Tom Gur, Jack O'Connor and Nicholas Spooner
   Accepted to Eurocrypt 2023.
3. The Superlinearity Problem in Post-Quantum Blockchains
   Sunoo Park and Nicholas Spooner
   Accepted to Financial Cryptography (FC) 2023.
4. Quantum Rewinding for Many-Round Protocols
   Russell W.F. Lai, Giulio Malavolta and Nicholas Spooner
   TCC 2022, Chicago, USA.
5. Post-Quantum Zero Knowledge, Revisited (or: How to Do Quantum Rewinding Undetectably)
   Alex Lombardi, Fermi Ma and Nicholas Spooner.
   FOCS 2022, Denver, USA. Accepted to QIP 2023.
6. On Succinct Non-Interactive Arguments in Relativized Worlds
   Megan Chen, Alessandro Chiesa and Nicholas Spooner.
   Eurocrypt 2022, Trondheim, Norway.
7. Post-Quantum Succinct Arguments: Breaking the Quantum Rewinding Barrier
   Alessandro Chiesa, Fermi Ma, Nicholas Spooner and Mark Zhandry.
   FOCS 2021 (invited to SICOMP special issue), online. QIP 2022, Pasadena, USA. QCrypt 2021, online. [talk by Fermi Ma]
   Talk at Protocol Labs.
8. Proof-Carrying Data without Succinct Arguments
   Benedikt Bünz, Alessandro Chiesa, William Lin, Pratyush Mishra and Nicholas Spooner.
   CRYPTO 2021, online. Charles River Crypto Day, online. [talk]
9. Proof-Carrying Data from Accumulation Schemes
   Benedikt Bünz, Alessandro Chiesa, Pratyush Mishra and Nicholas Spooner.
   TCC 2020, online.
10. Fractal: Post-Quantum and Transparent Recursive Proofs from Holography
    Alessandro Chiesa, Dev Ojha and Nicholas Spooner.
    Eurocrypt 2020, online. [talk by Dev Ojha] SBC 2020, Stanford, USA. [talk]
11. Efficient Post-quantum SNARKs for RSIS and RLWE and Their Applications to Privacy.
    Cecilia Boschini, Jan Camenisch, Max Ovsiankin and Nick Spooner.
    PQCrypto 2020. [talk by Cecilia Boschini]
12. Succinct Arguments in the Quantum Random Oracle Model
    Alessandro Chiesa, Peter Manohar and Nicholas Spooner.
    TCC 2019, Nuremberg, Germany. QIP 2020, Shenzhen, China. [talk]
13. Linear-Size Constant-Query IOPs for Delegating Computation
    Eli Ben-Sasson, Alessandro Chiesa, Lior Goldberg, Tom Gur, Michael Riabzev and Nicholas Spooner.
    TCC 2019, Nuremberg, Germany.
14. Aurora: Transparent Succinct Arguments for R1CS
    Eli Ben-Sasson, Alessandro Chiesa, Michael Riabzev, Nicholas Spooner, Madars Virza and Nicholas P. Ward.
    Eurocrypt 2019, Darmstadt, Germany. 2nd ZKProof Standards Workshop, Berkeley, CA. [talk]
15. Spatial Isolation Implies Zero Knowledge Even in a Quantum World
    Alessandro Chiesa, Michael A. Forbes, Tom Gur and Nicholas Spooner.
    FOCS 2018, Paris, France. [talk] QIP 2019, Boulder, CO, USA.
    (includes material from preprint A Zero Knowledge Sumcheck and its Applications.)
16. Zero Knowledge Protocols from Succinct Constraint Detection
    Eli Ben-Sasson, Alessandro Chiesa, Michael A. Forbes, Ariel Gabizon, Michael Riabzev and Nicholas Spooner.
    TCC 2017, Baltimore MD, USA.
17. Interactive Oracle Proofs with Constant Query Complexity and Rate
    Eli Ben-Sasson, Alessandro Chiesa, Ariel Gabizon, Michael Riabzev and Nicholas Spooner.
    ICALP 2017, Warsaw, Poland.
18. Interactive oracle proofs
    Eli Ben-Sasson, Alessandro Chiesa and Nicholas Spooner.
    TCC 2016-B, Beijing, China.
19. Fixed-Budget Performance of the (1+1)-EA on Linear Functions
    Johannes Lengler and Nicholas Spooner.
    ACM/SIGEVO Foundations of Genetic Algorithms XIII (FOGA 2015), Aberystwyth, UK.

• Post-quantum cryptographic proofs STOC 2022 Workshop: The Multiple Facets of Quantum Proofs, June 2022.
• SNARKs from Hash Functions. ZK HACK #1, Oct 2021
• Proofs of proofs: incremental verifiability from recursion and accumulation 4th ZKProof Standards Workshop, May 2021

• A Zero Knowledge Sumcheck and its Applications
  Alessandro Chiesa, Michael A. Forbes and Nicholas Spooner.
  ePrint 2017/305
• Evaluation and Benchmarking for Robot Motion Planning Problems Using TuLiP
  Nicholas Spooner.
  Caltech Technical Report (2012).

• Program committee member, Quantum Cryptography Workshop (QCW) 2022.
• Program committee member, Theory of Cryptography Conference (TCC) 2022.
• Program committee member, ZKProof4 (2021).
• Program committee member, Theory of Cryptography Conference (TCC) 2020.
• Program committee member, Stanford Blockchain Conference (SBC) 2020.

Contact: nicholas [dot] last name [at] warwick [dot] ac [dot] uk