Cryptography Engineer · Lisbon, Portugal
Manuel Batalha
dos Santos
I work on cryptography and the systems that use it. Currently, I’m Lead Cryptography Researcher at MultiVM Labs, focusing on post-quantum security and threshold signatures.
My work spans protocol research, cryptographic software, and security assessment. I’ve built systems for secure multiparty computation, authenticated private data, and private AI, and studied quantum attacks on elliptic-curve cryptography.
I did my PhD research in Quantum Cryptography at Técnico, University of Lisbon, and hold an MSc in Applied Mathematics from Imperial College London, where I wrote my thesis on Mathematical Physics.
Away from the desk, I’m a husband, father of three, surfer, amateur tenor, and viola player. You can call me Manel.
Work
Research & engineeringMultiVM LabsApr 2026 - PresentLead Cryptography ResearcherPost-quantum cryptography, threshold signatures, and quantum cryptanalysis.
Cryptographic design
- Helped design cryptographic agility at the consensus layer for the Quantum L1, including migration between signature schemes.
- Implement threshold post-quantum signatures and design TEE co-signer architectures for hybrid signing.
Audits & standards
- Conduct quantum-readiness audits for Tether and Canton.
- Participate in the NIST NCCoE project.
Research
- Help build the quantum cryptanalysis team at Potomaq.
- Research quantum circuits for elliptic-curve cryptanalysis, including the point-addition work in ECDSA.Fail and Efficient Record-and-Replay Arithmetic.
Tectonic LabsOct 2025 - Mar 2026Cryptography Research EngineerPost-quantum wallets, blockchain migration, and protocol engineering.
Cryptographic design & engineering
- Implemented Mithril, a threshold post-quantum ML-DSA signing protocol.
- Designed and implemented hybrid hierarchical deterministic wallets (archived article), including specification work and hybrid HD support in Rust.
- Maintained Bedrock’s post-quantum cryptography library.
- Contributed to SLIPs standards with a proposal to add ML-DSA post-quantum signatures to SLIP-0010.
Audits & standards
- Conducted a quantum-readiness audit for 0G.
- Developed an AI-based internal quantum-readiness audit toolkit extending CBOMkit, helping define the audit product.
- Conducted internal security assessments of PQWallet and patched four high-risk and six medium-risk findings.
- Participated in the NIST NCCoE project and its discussions, including giving a presentation on cryptographic agility in blockchains.
Research
- Conducted research on cryptographic agility in blockchains, leading to our MAgiCS 2026 paper.
- Researched post-quantum peer-to-peer handshakes and threshold signatures.
Nillion LabsMay 2023 - Aug 2025Cryptography EngineerMPC protocols, authenticated private computation, and private AI inference.
Cryptographic design & engineering
- Implemented cryptographic protocols in nilVM and integrated threshold signatures into Nillion’s MPC backend. Contributed to the CGGMP ECDSA upgrade.
- Contributed to Nada’s private-computation language and built its NumPy-style library, nada-numpy.
- Researched zkTLS integration with MPC, FHE, and TEEs. Integrated RELIC into OTLS and implemented zero-knowledge proofs and circuits for LWE encryption in TFHE-rs and emp-zk.
Private AI & research
- Designed and implemented private LLM inference in PyTorch, with research published as Curl (code) and Fission.
- Developed nilRAG and integrated Gemma 3 and structured outputs into nilAI, the confidential vLLM system behind nilGPT.
- Built three interactive private computation demos and studied privacy attacks on LLMs, including membership inference and input inversion.
Writing
- Wrote 11 technical blog posts on cryptography, AI agents, and private LLM inference.
Telecommunication InstituteOct 2019 - May 2023Cryptography ResearcherQuantum-assisted MPC and private genomic analysis.
- Developed QuPPA, a system for private phylogenetic analysis combining secure multiparty computation and quantum technologies, using custom forks of MP-SPDZ and Libscapi.
- Researched quantum oblivious transfer and oblivious linear evaluation alongside my PhD at Técnico.
TekeverNov 2018 - Sep 2019Data ScientistRecommendation systems for Portugal’s Trade Agency.
- Built a Python and Neo4j recommendation system to suggest export markets for Portuguese companies.
- Combined unsupervised learning, association rules, and collaborative filtering.
TekeverDec 2017 - Nov 2018Quantum Cryptography ResearcherQuantum technologies for secure multiparty computation and quantum cryptography.
Secure multiparty computation
- Researched applications of quantum technologies to secure multiparty computation, working with privacy-preserving frameworks including Obliv-C and ABY.
Quantum cryptography
- Worked on theoretical algorithms for quantum oblivious transfer (QOT) and quantum key distribution (QKD).
- Worked on a laboratory implementation of semi-quantum key distribution (Semi-QKD).
Project proposals & partnerships
- Led the technical development of EU and national project proposals. Secured the PT2020 Q.DOT project for secure multiparty computation, raising €609,544 in funding.
- Built and led a consortium of 18 international institutions. Established research partnerships with organisations including Thales, Imperial College London, and Fraunhofer HHI.