Senior Scientist · Cryptography

Ahmad Al Badawi, Ph.D.

I work at the intersection of applied cryptography and machine learning, advancing fully homomorphic encryption toward practical, deployable systems for private AI.

• 50+ Publications
• 2,300+ Citations
• 20 h-index
• $22M+ Funded research

Recent publications

• Cryptology ePrintPreprint

  SoK: Private LLM Inference using Approximate Homomorphic Encryption

  Al Badawi, A., Alexandru, A., Polyakov, Y., & Vaikuntanathan, V.

  Paper
• IACR CiCJournal

  Application-Aware Approximate Homomorphic Encryption: Configuring FHE for Practical Use

  Alexandru, A., Al Badawi, A., Micciancio, D., & Polyakov, Y.

  Paper
• IJRESJournal

  Hardware Design for Fast Gate Bootstrapping in Fully Homomorphic Encryption over the Torus

  Vig, S., Al Badawi, A., & Yusof, M.

  Paper

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Recent writing

• The Math of Slot Rotation in BGV and BFV

  Dec 28, 2025 38 min read

  Ahmad Al Badawi

• SIMD Packing in BGV/BFV FHE Schemes

  Dec 15, 2025 26 min read

  Ahmad Al Badawi

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Recent talks

• OpenFHE: A Community-Driven Open-Source Project for FHE

  Sep 5, 2024 NUMFOCUS Project Summit 2024 · Microsoft New England Research & Development (NERD) Center, Cambridge, MA, United States

  I had the pleasure of participating in the NUMFOCUS Project Summit 2024, which was held at the Microsoft New England Research & Development (NERD) Center, Cambridge, MA, United States, to share...

• FHEllo, world! FHE Community Workshop

  Feb 21, 2024 enCRYPTON: Summer School on Cryptographic Solutions for Privacy Enhancing Technologies · Sabancı University, Istanbul, Turkey

  I had the pleasure of participating in the FHEllo World! workshop, a community-oriented online event focused on Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE). During the workshop, I presented a talk on the Op...

• enCRYPTON: Summer School on Cryptographic Solutions for Privacy Enhancing Technologies

  Aug 28, 2023 enCRYPTON: Summer School on Cryptographic Solutions for Privacy Enhancing Technologies · Sabancı University, Istanbul, Turkey

  I participated in this workshop as an instructor and gave five lectures on the following topics:

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About

I am a dedicated researcher specializing in applied cryptography and privacy-preserving technologies - fields focused on developing efficient methods to secure data throughout its lifecycle, whether at rest, in transit, or in use. I hold a Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the National University of Singapore (2018) and have built a strong publication record with papers in prestigious journals and top-tier conferences. Beyond research, I have taught university courses, built and led research teams, and advised deep-tech startups on designing and deploying secure, privacy-aware solutions. My expertise extends to hardware acceleration, where I focus on optimizing the performance and efficiency of complex cryptographic operations.

My goal is to contribute to a more secure and resilient digital world - bridging theoretical foundations and practical solutions to make privacy-preserving computation usable at real-world scale.

For details on my current and past projects, funding, and research themes, see my research page. For the work in code, see open-source contributions.