Crypto Summer School
“NERD”
That’s what I got called by one of my long-time friends when I told them that I was going to this Summer School on Cryptography organized by ACM India in collaboration with Trust Lab, IIT Bombay.
“Where is it?”
“IIT Bombay”
“Aye, you’re going to Bombay!”
Fast forward
Day 1
I was expecting to meet cryptography nerds who only had conversations in protocols.
Whom did I meet?
A diverse crowd, more diverse than I expected. People who had never heard of crypto, people doing PhDs in Crypto, people who thought it was about cryptocurrency or blockchain, people who just wanted to have a trip to Bombay/IIT Bombay (because omg, have you seen the campus?), and some who learned about it for the first time and went away with keywords to Google later.
Regardless of whatever background everyone came from, one thing we all shared was curiosity.
Whether it was curiosity for cryptography or networking, I’m pretty sure everyone took something nice away.
Day 1 went well.
We had a series of 6-7 speakers lined up for two whole weeks in a classroom of 70 people from diverse backgrounds: B.Tech, M.Tech, MSc, BSc, iMTech, PhD—you name it. And don’t even get me started on the places and universities represented; this was the most amazing and diverse group I had ever interacted with, at least since my college started.
There were approximately 4-5 sessions per day: 3 theory sessions + 2 lab/theory/exercise sessions.
Lab sessions were held by TAs from Trust Lab itself. They were chill—both the sessions and the TAs.
Speakers came from IITs, IIITs, startups, and industry, and oh my, some of them were pretty solid people.
Friday evening we had a unique dinner, to say the least. It was so kind of the organizers—they had something they called a gala dinner. The idea was to have good food, talk to your mentors and peers (in case you were too shy to talk in class or during breaks), and have a good time. It was supposed to be from 7-8 PM, but God forbid, the vibes were too nice and the conversations were too fun—it was 9:30 by the time everyone left.
Week 1 passed quicker than I can even recall. Day 1 was Monday, and suddenly it was Saturday.
Saturday came with intellectual fun through lectures by Prof. Monosij Maitra, IIT KGP and Prof. Venkata Koppula, IIT Delhi, plus an internal competition between the tables in the classroom.
And hell, my table—Table 6—had amazing people who later became friends:
- Souradeep, our golden hen
- Anirban, our credit card influencer
- Rajvee, our quick thinker on her feet
- Rohit, our humble, sleepy, sweet buddy
- Aryan, our standup comedian on the go
- Saumya, our big-brain energy with a sweet soul
We won that internal competition, as they called it.
Victory loot included IITB merch bags and nerdy certificates.
The professionalism of the class dissolved into an air of competitiveness and loyalty to the table, which none of us expected to manifest.
There was a buzz of weekend excitement. Since we didn’t have any sessions on Sunday, plans were being made, groups were forming, itineraries were planned, and everyone just wanted to explore or have a nice, chill weekend.
Sunday was an outing for most people to travel around Mumbai. Don’t get me wrong, but beaches aren’t the best option on weekends. The good food is there though, and yes, I spent my weekend eating, exploring Colaba, and traveling safely by local train (thank god I went on Sunday).
Sunday passed even more quickly, but now I had Mumbai checked off my list.
Monday came, and so did the people—now more casual and less professional, happier and learning and adapting to sessions even better.
We had people from Aztec Labs, IBM Research, IIIT Bangalore, and Arithmic Labs.
Some of the topics covered over the two weeks included a broad range of foundational and advanced topics in cryptography:
- Basic information-theoretic and computational tools
- Secure communication: foundations of symmetric-key and public-key cryptography
- Proof systems: zero-knowledge proofs, succinct arguments (SNARGs and SNARKs)
- Secure multi-party computation: classical and recent constructions, with practical implementations
- Other advanced topics: fully-homomorphic encryption, functional encryption, obfuscation, cryptography for blockchains
Now, if you’re wondering whether I just sat through talks nodding meaningfully while zoning out—let me stop you right there.
(Bear with it, this is me going nerd-beast mode)
What truly blew my mind was the absolute sorcery of Fully Homomorphic Encryption, especially as it arose from the tangled web of lattices. Seeing Learning With Errors (LWE) transition into Ring-LWE, and then being sculpted into usable schemes like BGV and CKKS, oh god, I wish I could explain the adrenaline rush of it all.
The exercise sessions were where the real magic happened—where I finally sat back and thought, “Okay, this actually makes sense now.”
In the MPC and Circom labs, we didn’t just read about secure computation—we performed it. Writing custom circuits, building R1CS constraints, understanding how Groth16 compresses an entire computation into a few field elements—it wasn’t just mind-expanding; it was mind-detaching (dramatic af IK).
Then came Yao’s Garbled Circuits. The explanation hit me so hard I forgot the explanation—but I still remember the brain reboot that followed.
Then sessions on adversarial models had me—IND-CPA, IND-CCA, and the general paranoia of the Random Oracle Model made me realize how deep the rabbit hole goes. Security isn’t just a definition (it is)—it’s a final boss arena, and the adversary has root access (cuz we break ourselves to make it).
And of course, the grand finale—ZK-SNARKs. Succinct, non-interactive, and so elegant it felt illegal. The fact that you can prove you know a solution without revealing anything about it? That’s not just crypto. That’s black magic with academic peer review, at least that’s what my non-crypto folks called it, when I learnt it enough to explain it.
This was the part of the Summer School that didn’t just interest me—it infected me. These are the rabbit holes I might dive into, probably at the cost of my GPA, sleep and sanity.
As the summer school wrapped up, something interesting had unfolded. The math started settling in. The jargon became language. And the people? They stopped being “people from XYZ college or university” and became intellectual peers, crypto meme-sharers even.
Not everyone left with the same level of obsession—but most left with more questions than answers. And that’s the whole point.
We might never get this exact mix of people, minds, and moments again—and that’s exactly why I’m going to remember it for a long, long time.
You can call it crazy luck or coincidence, but coming to this Summer School was certainly a rewarding experience.
Crypto’s hard. Making sense of it with the right crowd? That’s priceless.
Would I do it again?
Absolutely
Nerd? Yeah. But now I’ve got SNARKs to prove it.
Oh and cats»»»
:))