Rate My Professor Nektarios Tsoutsos

Dr. Nektarios Georgios Tsoutsos is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Delaware, with a joint appointment in the Department of Computer and Information Sciences. He earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science from New York University in 2018, M.Sc. in Computer Engineering from Columbia University, and Diploma in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens. Tsoutsos joined the University of Delaware in 2018 as an Assistant Professor, advancing to Associate Professor in September 2025. Previously, he was a Postdoctoral Researcher at New York University, where he developed secure architectures for processing sensitive information using homomorphic encryption, and served as a Graduate Technical Intern at Intel's Security Center of Excellence. Earlier roles include Research Assistant at NYU and Information Security Advisor at Obrela Security Industries.

Tsoutsos's research specializes in cybersecurity and applied cryptography, emphasizing hardware security, trustworthy computing, privacy outsourcing, computer architecture, and cyber-physical systems. He has authored numerous publications in prestigious venues, including "Data Privacy Made Easy: Enhancing Applications with Homomorphic Encryption" (ACM Transactions on Design Automation of Electronic Systems, 2025), "HELM: Navigating Homomorphic Encryption through Gates and Lookup Tables" (IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security, 2025), "Juliet: A Robust and Configurable Encrypted Processor" (IEEE Transactions on Computers, 2024), "Masquerade: Verifiable Multi-Party Aggregation with Secure Multiplicative Commitments" (ACM Transactions on Internet Technology, 2024), and "Zilch: A Framework for Deploying Transparent Zero-Knowledge Proofs" (IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security, 2021). His scholarship has attracted over 1,600 citations. Tsoutsos has secured major funding, notably the NSF CAREER Award (2023-2028, $534,000) for accelerating general-purpose encrypted computation on diverse hardware, along with other NSF grants exceeding $5 million as PI or co-PI. Awards include Delaware’s 15 Most Influential Business Leaders (2023), University of Delaware Research Foundation Award (2021), Pearl Brownstein Doctoral Research Award (2018), and 1st Place at CSAW Embedded Security Challenge (2013). He holds leadership roles as Co-Director of UD’s FinTech Innovation Hub (since 2024), Associate Director of the Center for Cybersecurity, Assurance, and Privacy (since 2021), member of the Delaware Cyber Security Advisory Council (since 2025), and Senior Member of IEEE. Tsoutsos directs the Cybersecurity Minor, advises the Computer Engineering Minor and CyberCorps Scholarship for Service, and organizes cybersecurity competitions.