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.

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.

1. On the necessity of collapsing
   Marcel Dall'Agnol and Nicholas Spooner
   Accepted to QCW 2022, QIP 2023 (poster) and TQC 2023 (proceedings).
2. Speed-Stacking: Fast Sublinear Zero-Knowledge Proofs for Disjunctions
   Aarushi Goel, Mathias Hall-Andersen, Gabriel Kaptchuk and Nicholas Spooner
   Eurocrypt 2023, Lyon, France.
3. Proof-Carrying Data From Arithmetized Random Oracles
   Megan Chen, Alessandro Chiesa, Tom Gur, Jack O'Connor and Nicholas Spooner
   Eurocrypt 2023, Lyon, France.
4. The Superlinearity Problem in Post-Quantum Blockchains
   Sunoo Park and Nicholas Spooner
   Financial Cryptography (FC) 2023, Bol, Croatia.
5. Quantum Rewinding for Many-Round Protocols
   Russell W.F. Lai, Giulio Malavolta and Nicholas Spooner
   TCC 2022, Chicago, USA.
6. Post-Quantum Zero Knowledge, Revisited (or: How to Do Quantum Rewinding Undetectably)
   Alex Lombardi, Fermi Ma and Nicholas Spooner.
   FOCS 2022, Denver, USA. QIP 2023, Ghent, Belgium.
7. On Succinct Non-Interactive Arguments in Relativized Worlds
   Megan Chen, Alessandro Chiesa and Nicholas Spooner.
   Eurocrypt 2022, Trondheim, Norway.
8. 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.
9. 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]
10. Proof-Carrying Data from Accumulation Schemes
    Benedikt Bünz, Alessandro Chiesa, Pratyush Mishra and Nicholas Spooner.
    TCC 2020, online.
11. 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]
12. 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]
13. Succinct Arguments in the Quantum Random Oracle Model
    Alessandro Chiesa, Peter Manohar and Nicholas Spooner.
    TCC 2019, Nuremberg, Germany. QIP 2020, Shenzhen, China. [talk]
14. 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.
15. 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]
16. 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.)
17. 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.
18. 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.
19. Interactive oracle proofs
    Eli Ben-Sasson, Alessandro Chiesa and Nicholas Spooner.
    TCC 2016-B, Beijing, China.
20. 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