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I am a fifth (final) year Computer Science PhD student at Cornell Tech and IC3, where I am incredibly fortunate to be advised by Prof. Ari Juels. My research interests and experience span a variety of fields: Distributed Systems, Blockchains, Security, Applied Cryptography and Formal Verification.

I obtained my undergraduate degree in Computer Science & Engineering at IIT Bombay, where I worked on program verification with Prof. Supratik Chakraborty and NLP with Prof. Soumen Chakrabarti.

Prior to joining Cornell, I worked as a Quantitative Researcher and Low Latency C++ Engineer at a proprietary High Frequency Trading Firm in Mumbai and Singapore.

Updates

• [Aug'24] Presented PROF at SBC'24!
• [Aug'24] Paper on PROF: Protected Order Flow in a Profit-Seeking World is online!
• [July'24] CK accepted to CCS'24!
• [Mar'24] Presented Mysticeti at Ava Labs Systems Seminar, and in a guest lecture at IIT Madras!
• [Nov'23] Presented Lanturn at ACM CCS'23 and Ava Labs Systems Seminar!
• [Aug'23] Paper on Mysticeti: Low-Latency DAG Consensus with Fast Commit Path with Andrey Chursin, George Danezis, Lefteris Kokoris-Kogias and Alberto Sonnino is online!
• [Aug'23] Lanturn accepted to CCS'23!
• [Aug'23] Presented Lanturn at SBC'23! Find the recording here.
• [Aug'23] Presented PROF at MEV Day! Find the recording here.
• [May'23] Presented Clockwork Finance at IEEE S&P'23!
• [Feb'23] Charlotte accepted to TOCS'23!
• [Jan'23] I will intern this summer at Mysten Labs, working with George Danezis and the Systems Group on consensus research!
• [Jan'23] Paper on Complete Knowledge (CK) with Mahimna Kelkar, Philip Daian, James Austgen, Vitalik Buterin and Ari Juels is online!
• [July'22] Presented Shortstack at OSDI'22!

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Publications

Preprints

• PROF: Protected Order Flow in a Profit-Seeking World [PDF] [Code] [Website] [SBC'24 Talk]
  Kushal Babel, Nerla Jean-Louis, Yan Ji, Ujval Misra, Mahimna Kelkar, Kosala Yapa Mudiyanselage, Andrew Miller, Ari Juels
  ArXiv Preprint, 2024
  


• Mysticeti: Low-Latency DAG Consensus with Fast Commit Path [Video] [PDF] [Code]
  Kushal Babel, Andrey Chursin, George Danezis, Lefteris Kokoris-Kogias, Alberto Sonnino
  ArXiv Preprint, 2023
  Adopted by the Sui Blockchain


• DAO Decentralization: Voting-Bloc Entropy, Bribery, and Dark DAOs [PDF] [Code]
  James Austgen*, Andres Fabrega*, Sarah Allen, Kushal Babel, Mahimna Kelkar, Ari Juels
  ArXiv Preprint, 2023

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Conference and Journals

• Complete Knowledge: Preventing Encumbrance of Cryptographic Secrets [PDF] [Code] [Blog Post]
  Mahimna Kelkar*, Kushal Babel*, Philip Daian*, James Austgen, Vitalik Buterin, Ari Juels
  ACM CCS 2024


• Lanturn: Measuring Economic Security of Smart Contracts Through Adaptive Learning [PDF] [Code] [Slides] [SBC'23 Talk]
  Kushal Babel*, Mojan Javaheripi*, Yan Ji, Mahimna Kelkar, Farinaz Koushanfar, Ari Juels
  ACM CCS 2023


• Clockwork Finance: Automated Analysis of Economic Security in Smart Contracts [PDF] [Slides] [SBC'22 Talk]
  Kushal Babel*, Philip Daian*, Mahimna Kelkar*, Ari Juels
  IEEE S&P 2023
  SCRF Research Impact Award
  Best Paper Award by the DeFi workshop at ACM CCS 2024


• Charlotte: Reformulating Blockchains into a Web of Composable Attested Data Structures for Cross-Domain Applications [PDF] [Slides] [Code]
  Isaac Sheff, Xinwen Wang, Kushal Babel, Haobin Ni, Robbert van Renesse, Andrew Myers
  ACM TOCS 2023


• Shortstack: Distributed, Fault-tolerant, Oblivious Data Access [PDF] [Code] [Slides] [OSDI Talk]
  Midhul Vuppalapati*, Kushal Babel*, Anurag Khandelwal, Rachit Agarwal
  USENIX OSDI 2022


• Strategic Peer Selection Using Transaction Value and Latency [PDF] [Slides] [Talk]
  Kushal Babel, Lucas Baker
  Workshop On DeFi and Security @ ACM CCS 2022


• On the semantics of communications when verifying equivalence properties [PDF]
  Kushal Babel, Vincent Cheval, Steve Kremer
  Journal of Computer Security 2020


• On Communication Models When Verifying Equivalence Properties [PDF]
  Kushal Babel, Vincent Cheval, Steve Kremer
  POST (ETAPS) 2017 Best paper award nomination

(* equal contribution)

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Blog Posts

• The Sting Framework (SF). June'23
• PROF: Fair Transaction-Ordering in a Profit-Seeking World. April'23
• Complete Knowledge. Jan'23

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Invited Talks

• PROF: Protected Order Flow for Fair Transaction-Ordering in a Profit-Seeking World
  • [Video] Science of Blockchain Conference (NYC) : Aug'24
  • UCSB-Econ DeFi Seminar : Sept'24
  • [Video] MEV Day @ SBC (Palo Alto, CA) : Aug'23
• Mysticeti: Low-Latency DAG Consensus with Fast Commit Path
  • Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras : Mar'24
  • [Video] Avalanche Labs Systems Seminar : Feb'24
  • IC3 Retreat (Les Diablerets) : Jan'24
• Lanturn: Measuring Economic Security of Smart Contracts Through Adaptive Learning
  • [Video] Avalanche Labs Systems Seminar : Dec'23
  • ACM CCS (Copenhagen): Nov'23
  • [Slides] [Video] Science of Blockchain Conference (Palo Alto, CA) : Aug'23
  • IC3 Retreat (Les Diablerets) : Jan'23
• Clockwork Finance: Automated Analysis of Economic Security in Smart Contracts
  • [Video] IEEE S&P (San Francisco, CA) : May'23
  • [Slides] [Video] Science of Blockchain Conference (Palo Alto, CA) : Aug'22
• Shortstack: Distributed, Fault-tolerant, Oblivious Data Access
  • [Slides] [Video] USENIX OSDI (Carlsbad, CA) : July'22
• Charlotte: A Web of Composable Authenticated Distributed Data Structures
  • Ripple University Blockchain Research Initiative (Remote) : Oct'20 [Video]

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Experience

• Summer'23 - Research Intern, Mysten Labs - Systems Team, hosted by George Danezis
• Summer'22 - Research Intern, Jump Crypto
• 2018-19 - HFT Quantitative Researcher and low-latency C++ Engineer, AlphaGrep Securities
• Summer'17 - SWE Intern, Uber India
• Summer'16 - Research Intern, INRIA Nancy - Formal Methods Team, hosted by Steve Kremer

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Selected Awards

• Silver Medal, 9^th International Junior Science Olympiad, Tehran
• Bronze Medal, 46^th International Chemistry Olympiad, Hanoi
• KVPY fellowship

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Teaching

I enjoy teaching! I've served as a Teaching Assistant for several courses:

• Blockchains and Cryptocurrencies, Cornell Tech - Spring'22
• Introduction to Compilers, Cornell University - Spring'20
• Object-Oriented Design and Data Structures, Cornell University - Fall'19
• Operating Systems, IIT Bombay - Fall'17
• Digial Logic Design, IIT Bombay - Spring'17
• Computer Programming & Utilization, IIT Bombay - Fall'16
• Programming Abstractions, IIT Bombay - Spring'16
• Quantum Physics, IIT Bombay - Fall'15

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Academic Service

I co-organized the Cornell Security Seminar in 2021-22 with Armin.

Program Committee:

• DeFi and Security Workshop @ ACM CCS 2024
• DeFi Workshop @ FC 2023
• DeFi and Security Workshop @ ACM CCS 2022

External Reviewer:

• ACM SIGMETRICS 2024
• FC 2024
• SBC 2022
• ACM CCS 2020

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Many thanks to Midhul for the site inspiration.