Aayush Gupta

Aayush Gupta

Hey! I'm an easily-nerdsniped lifelong learner who enjoys hard translational research, leading open source organizations, and being marginally useful. I also like blogging about conviction, cryptography, and movie/travel recs. I also deeply care about open education for MIT and Harvard, and give my money away as grants for cool open source work. I work on open source zero knowledge cryptography right now, perceptual hashing (adversarially robust image provenance and copy detection), and open education projects. In the past: multi-tissue aging research, equivariant molecular neural networks, applied ML, and healthcare.

Best Posts

• Blog

  Writing about cryptography, media, conviction, and obsessions.
• Thoughts for Curious Rabbit-holers

  A live post of short updates across topics.
• Conviction

  On building and testing conviction in ideas.
• ZK Email

  Anonymous proofs for identity and provenance via email data.
• Movie/Travel Recommendations

  Novelty-focused recommendations.

Projects

• ZK Email: Anonymous Proofs about Email Data

  Co-steward proof platform to prove identity via received emails, whistleblow securely, and recover wallets with emails.
• Proteus: Perceptual-Hash based Image Provenance for AI

  Framework to detect if an image was generated by AI, institution, or person; robust to transformations with privacy for queries. Built a state-of-the-art perceptual hash for fast copy detection.
• MIT SOUL and Coursetexts

  Open-sourcing course materials at MIT and Harvard.
• PLUME: ZK Voting on Ethereum, via Deterministic ECDSA Signatures

  New nullifier scheme for pseudonymity (ZK-SNARKs + ECDSA). Implementation, proposed as ERC-7524.
• Auto-Latex Equations (Google Docs)

  Real-time LaTeX rendering. 30M+ users, 4.5★; also on Google Slides.
• lxm.house

  Group house project with friends; moved from Cambridge to SF.
• Ideas Microgrants Program

  Grants for building software ideas that people would actually use (11 given so far).
• MIT AIM Labs

  Co-created MIT's applied ML project club.
• Hack Lodge

  Led an iteration; mentored and attended many times.
• Reflective Cabin Retreat Guide

  Co-ran a retreat; co-wrote a guide to run your own.
• Homebased.dev

  Project-based group house in Thailand (Jan 2023).
• EOE Diagnostics

  Proposal for a new diagnostic test for EOE; high-impact bio project idea.
• Signature Singularity Residency

  Residency for teams at the intersection of applied ZK proofs and signatures. Watch our demo day.
• Short Story: Stealing Time

  Sci-fi on localized time “freezes” in VR. Read here; grants for attempted implementations.
• ZK Message Board

  Prototype to publish anonymous group messages on-chain. Construction as Socratic dialogue.
• Lipoker.io

  First videochat pokersite without signups/downloads. 10K+ WAU; scaled to 700K+ games.
• Crypto Journal Thoughts

  Ideas for a better research journal.
• The Individual

  Helped spawn a cult at dweb camp with Black Swan; ethnography writeup.
• Vickrey Auctions on-chain

  First cheap, anonymous second-price auctions on chain (EthBogotá; with Jesse’s house).
• Multi-Tissue Aging Clocks Research

  Novel algorithm via RNA expression across tissues.
• Autonomous Drone

  IROS’17; POMDPs to pilot a custom-built drone. With Daniel, Patrick.
• USACO National Camp

  Top 30 nationwide (of 3000+) for algorithmic programming; prepped for IOI.
• Damn Daniel Button

  50k+ users; surpassed Candy Crush in Free Games; nearly got sued. With Daniel, Patrick.
• MIT Fades

  Hobby barbershop; pay-what-you-want; parody site.
• Chill Vibes Radio

  Cohosted night radio show; past setlists online.

Videos