About me

I am co-founder and Director at Soundness labs and PostDoc (Part-time) at COSIC, KU Leuven working with Prof. Bart Preneel.

During my PhD, I have been mainly working on privacy-enhancing techniques in distributed systems, with a focus on their applications on Blockchain space (Link to my Thesis). I have collaborated on multiple research papers and gained valuable experience working with global teams and leading companies. In summer 2023, I was a research intern at Mysten Labs, cryptography team.

These days, I am primarily focused on Post-Quantum for Blockchain and Indentity systems. Feel free to reach out to me with any questions or for collaboration opportunities.

News

• 2026-03-30 Talk accepted to zkSummit.
• 2026-03-25 Two talks accepted to PrivCrypt 2026 (affiliated with Eurocrypt 2026).
• 2026-03-04 Presented PQchain at FC’26. Link to slides.
• 2025-11-29 New eprint is out. Multi-Verifier Keyed-Verification Anonymous Credentials.
• 2025-11-24 Post-Quantum Readiness in EdDSA Chains got accepted to FC’26 – later joined author.
• 2025-11-15 Build a tool to visualize recent results on proximity gap.
• 2025-11-10 I will be serving as a PC member at ACM CCS 2026, Applied crypto.
• 2025-09-02 Keyed-Verification Anonymous Credentials with Highly Efficient Partial Disclosure got accepted to IACR CiC, Volume 2, Issue 3.
• 2025-06-18 Awarded a Sui Foundation Academic Research grant.

Upcoming Events

• 2026-04-[19-24] To attend Privacy-Preserving Authentication Dagstuhl Seminar, Germany.
• 2026-05-07 To attend zkSummit and give a talk in Rome, Italy.
• 2026-07-[02-03] To attend 4th Edition of the TUM Blockchain&Cybersecurity Salon and give a talk.

Past Events

Pls refer to CV.

Current Students

• Hossein Moghaddas (COSIC, KU Leuven), PhD co-supervisor.

Past Students

• Hossein Hafezi (New York University), Visitor -> Cambridge University
• Kiran Deep Ghosh (ISI Kolkata), master thesis supervisor -> PhD at RUB, Germany
• Raphaël Deknop (KU Leuven), Intern -> Master in Physics (KU Leuven)
• Theresa Wakonig (ETH Zurich), master thesis co-supervisor -> ETH Zurich

Extra

How to pronounce my name: First name: MAH-dee (with the emphasis on the first syllable; “MAH” as in “ma” from “mama” and “dee” as in the letter “D”). Last name: Seh-dah-GHAHT (with the emphasis on the third syllable; “Seh” as in “set”, “dah” as in “dah” from “duh”, and “GHAHT” with a hard “G” like in “go” and “hat” but with a slightly more open “a” sound)