Vinod Vaikuntanathan is a professor of computer science at MIT and the chief cryptographer at Duality Technologies. His research is in the foundations of cryptography and its applications to theoretical computer science at large. He is known for his work on fully homomorphic encryption, a powerful cryptographic primitive that enables complex computations on encrypted data, as well as lattice-based cryptography, which lays down a new mathematical foundation for cryptography in the post-quantum world. Recently, he has been interested in the interactions of cryptography with quantum computing, as well as with statistics and machine learning. Vinod's work has been recognized with several awards including the Simons Investigator Award (2023), Gödel Prize (2022), Harold E. Edgerton Faculty Award (2018), DARPA Young Faculty Award (2018), the Sloan Faculty Fellowship (2013) and the Microsoft Faculty Fellowship (2014). He holds SM and PhD degrees from MIT and a BTech degree from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras.