The Nym team
Harry Halpin, PhD
CEO and Chairman of Scientific Board
Harry is the CEO and co-founder of Nym Technologies. He was previously a senior research scientist at MIT where he led the standardization of the Web Cryptography API, and at Inria de Paris on socio-technical systems and privacy. Harry earned his PhD in Informatics and Philosophy from the University of Edinburgh.
Alexis Roussel
Chief Operating Officer
Alexis is Nym's COO and co-founder. Before Nym, he established Bity, a Swiss crypto brokerage and financial services firm, and led the Swiss Pirate Party in support of privacy rights. He has had roles at the International Court of Justice and the United Nations. He earned his Masters in Law from the Sorbonne University in Paris.
Prof. Claudia Diaz
Chief Scientist
Claudia is Nym’s Chief Scientist Office and a part-time Associate Professor at KU Leuven (COSIC). She specializes in developing and analyzing online privacy protection technologies, particularly those safeguarding metadata against surveillance. Claudia earned her PhD in Engineering, Computer Security, and Privacy from KU Leuven.
Jaya Klara Brekke, PhD
Chief Strategy Officer
Jaya leads the development of the Nym ecosystem of operators, community, business development, and comms. She is an advocate for privacy as the foundation for human rights and has spoken about and written numerous papers on decentralized technologies. Jaya holds a PhD in Digital Geography from Durham University.
Mark Sinclair, PhD
Chief Technology Officer
Mark leads Nym's Technology and Development teams, bringing extensive experience as a tech leader and co-founder of multiple startups, notably in sectors with high security / privacy constraints such as healthcare. He holds a PhD in Computer Vision and Image Processing from the University of Edinburgh.
Ania Piotrowska, PhD
Chief Scientific Officer
Ania leads Nym's Research team on security, distributed systems, and anonymous communication, including onion routing and mix networks. She also explores blockchain in the context of cryptocurrency privacy. Ania has a PhD in Computer Science from the University College London.
Nym Advisory Board
Prof. George Danezis
Security and Privacy Engineering expert
George is the Co-founder and Chief Scientist at Mysten Labs, and one of the designers of Sui Blockchain. He is also a Professor of Security and Privacy Engineering at the Department of Computer Science, University College London, and a faculty member since 2013. With a research focus on secure communications, privacy-preserving systems, blockchains, and decentralization, George has authored over 100 peer-reviewed publications in leading international conferences and journals. Previously, he co-founded Chainspace, a pioneering sharded smart contract platform, before the team moved to work on the Facebook Libra project.
Prof. Aggelos Kiayias
Cybersecurity and Privacy expert
Aggelos is the Chair in Cybersecurity and Privacy and the Director of the Blockchain Technology Laboratory at the University of Edinburgh. He also serves as the Chief Scientist at Input Output, a blockchain research and engineering company best known for the development of Cardano. With research spanning blockchain technologies, cryptography, e-voting, and privacy Aggelos has authored over 200 publications in leading journals and conferences. He is a recipient of the BCS Lovelace Medal and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
Ben Laurie
Security Engineer, privacy and civil liberties activist
Ben is a founding member of the Apache Software Foundation and the creator of Apache-SSL, which powers over half of the world’s secure Web sites. He is also a core team member of OpenSSL, the most widely used open-source cryptographic library, and an active contributor to FreeBSD. Ben is passionate about privacy and civil liberties, and was on the WikiLeaks’ Advisory Board. Recently, Ben has been honoured with the prestigious Levchin Prize for his contributions to cryptography. Currently, he works at Google as a Principal Engineer.
Prof. Bart Preneel
Cryptology and Information Security expert
Bart is the head of the COSIC research group at KU Leuven University. His work spans the design and analysis of cryptographic algorithms, information security, privacy, and secure hardware. Bart has authored over 400 scientific publications and is the inventor of five patents. He has served as president of the IACR and is a member of the Royal Flemish Academia of Belgium and of the Academia Europaea. He has received numerous prestigious honours, including the RSA Award for Excellence in Mathematics, the IFIP TC11 Kristian Beckman Award, and the ESORICS Outstanding Research Award..
Other Nym advisors
Prof. Daniel J. Bernstein
Mathematician, cryptologist, computer scientist
Daniel is renowned for his seminal contributions to cryptography. His work focuses on designing cryptographic systems to proactively reduce risks. His widely deployed designs include X25519, Ed25519, ChaCha20, dnscache, qmail, SipHash (co-designed with Jean-Philippe Aumasson), Streamlined NTRU Prime (with various co-designers) and Classic McEliece (with various co-designers). In 2003, he coined the term "post-quantum cryptography”.
Chelsea Manning
Security and Public Relations
Chelsea is a specialist in secure hardware and PR representative for Nym. As a former US Army soldier who disclosed classified military and diplomatic documents to WikiLeaks to reveal civilian casualties and human rights violations, she knows well the need for digital privacy and the scope of global surveillance capacities.
Karthikeyan Bhargavan, PhD
Co-founder and Chief Scientist, Cryspen
Karthik is the Chief Research Scientist at Cryspen. Previously, he held the role of Research Director at Inria Paris. His work focuses on programming languages, software verification, applied cryptography, and the design and analysis of security protocols. Notably, he played a key role in the design, analysis, and standardization of TLS 1.3.
Prof. Carmela Troncoso
Computer security and privacy expert
Carmela, an Associate Professor at EPFL, leads the SPRING Lab, which focuses on Security and Privacy Engineering. Her research explores the societal impact of technology, the development and analysis of privacy-enhancing technologies, and the intersection of machine learning with security and privacy. During the pandemic, she notably spearheaded the development of the DP-3T protocol, enabling COVID-19 contact tracing while safeguarding individual privacy. Carmela has authored over 100 articles published in leading peer-reviewed conferences.