Roopa Vishwanathan
Associate Professor
Pronouns: she/her(s)
Dept. of Computer Science
New Mexico State University (NMSU)
1290 Frenger Mall
Las Cruces, NM 88003
Contact e-mail: roopav at nmsu.edu
Location and Hours
Office: Science Hall 142
Office hours for Fall'25: M/W 3:00-4:00 pm, or by appointment
Teaching
Fall'26:
CSCI 4225/5225: Intro to Cryptography, M/W 1:30-2:45 pm Domenici Hall 005
Research Interests
I'm interested broadly in security, privacy, and applied cryptography. Of late, I've been investigating applied cryptography in the context of blockchain-based decentralized finance and other applications, such as secure auditing, doing blockchain rewrites, and designing access control mechanisms for blockchains. My current project is in the exciting area of building secure and efficient Layer 2 protocols, specifically payment channel networks, cross-chain mechanisms, and other topics in decentralized finance. I also have another ongoing project on secure distributed additive manufacturing, particularly from an applied cryptography perspective.
We have openings in my lab for Ph.D. students to work on several projects: Layer 2 protocols, decentralized finance, and exploring applications of cryptography to secure distributed additive manufacturing. If you're interested, please drop me an email!
My research has been in the past or is currently funded by the NSF, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), and the Dept. of Energy (DoE). Thank you to the funding agencies for their support!
Students
I'm fortunate to work with the following students:
Current: Kartick Kolachala (Postdoc)
Past: Kartick Kolachala (Ph.D.), Mohammed Ababneh (Ph.D.), Matheen Shaik (MS), Manuel Mares Solano (MS), Lalitha Muthu Subramanian (MS), Guruprasad Eswaraiah (MS), Douglas Nedza (BS)
Selected recent publications
2026
- Transaction-level Blockchain Rewrites with Revocation and Traceability using Attribute-based Cryptosystems
Gaurav Panwar, Roopa Vishwanathan and Satyajayant Misra
ACM Distributed Ledger Technologies: Research and Practice
2025
- FIRST: Frontrunning Resistant Smart Contracts
Emrah Sariboz, Gaurav Panwar, Roopa Vishwanathan and Satyajayant Misra
ACM AsiaCCS [pdf].
- SCOOP: Cost-effective Congestion Attacks in Payment Channel Networks
Mohammed Ababneh, Kartick Kolachala and Roopa Vishwanathan
CoDecFin 2025 [pdf].
- Verifiable Computation in Smartgrids using Dynamic Slicing
Matheen Basha Shaik and Roopa Vishwanathan
IEEE PerCom SPT-IoT
2024
- Auroch: Auction-based Multipath Routing in Payment Channel Networks
Mohammed Ababneh, Kartick Kolachala and Roopa Vishwanathan
ACM ASIACCS 2024 (AR 19%)[pdf].
- SPRITE: Secure and Private Routing in Payment Channel Networks
Gaurav Panwar, Roopa Vishwanathan, George Torres and Satyajayant Misra
ACM ASIACCS 2024 [pdf].
- RACED: Routing in Payment Channel Networks using Distributed Hash Tables
Kartick Kolachala, Mohammed Ababneh and Roopa Vishwanathan
ACM ASIACCS 2024 [pdf].
- SoK: Payment Channel Networks
Kartick Kolachala, Mohammed Ababneh and Roopa Vishwanathan
IEEE BuildSec 2024
- PEPPER: Privacy Preserving Auditable and Fair Payment based Resource Discovery at the Pervasive Edge
Emrah Sariboz, Reza Tourani, Roopa Vishwanathan and Satyajayant Misra
ACM ASIACCS 2024 [pdf].
2022
- Private and Secure Smart Meter Billing
Mohammed Ababneh, Kartick Kolachala and Roopa Vishwanathan
ACM CPSS 2022[pdf].
2021
- APECS: A Distributed Access Control Framework for Pervasive Edge Computing Services
Sean Dougherty, Reza Tourani, Gaurav Panwar, Roopa Vishwanathan, Satyajayant Misra and Srikathyayani Srikanteswara
ACM CCS 2021 [pdf].
- SoK: Money Laundering in Cryptocurrencies
Kartick Kolachala, Ecem Simsek, Mohammed Ababneh and Roopa Vishwanathan
ARES 2021 [pdf].
- ReTRACe: Revocable and Traceable Blockchain Rewrites using Attribute-based Cryptosystems
Gaurav Panwar, Roopa Vishwanathan and Satyajayant Misra
ACM SACMAT 2021 [pdf].
- Off-chain Execution and Verification of Computationally Intensive Smart Contracts
Emrah Sariboz, Kartick Kolachala, Gaurav Panwar, Roopa Vishwanathan and Satyajayant Misra
IEEE ICBC 2021 [pdf].
2020
- Balance Transfers and Bailouts in Credit Networks using Blockchains
Lalitha M. Subramanian, Roopa Vishwanathan and Kartick Kolachala
IEEE ICBC 2020 [pdf].
2019
- SAMPL: Scalable Auditability of Monitoring Processes using Public Ledgers
Roopa Vishwanathan, Gaurav Panwar, Satyajayant Misra, and Austin Bos
ACM CCS 2019 [pdf].
- BlAnC: Blockchain-based Anonymous and Decentralized Credit Networks
Gaurav Panwar and Satyajayant Misra and Roopa Vishwanathan
ACM Conference on Data and Application Security and Privacy (CODASPY) 2019 [pdf].
Older papers
About me
Before I joined NMSU, I was an Assistant Professor from 2014-2017 at SUNY Polytechnic in Utica, NY. Before that I was a Postdoc in UNC Greensboro from 2011-2013, working with Steve Tate. I joined UNC Greensboro in July 2011 after completing my PhD at the University of North Texas's Department of Computer Science and Engineering in May 2011. At UNC Greensboro, I worked on this project. Downloadable source code and plugins related to the project can be found here Even before that, I received my BE in Computer Science and Engineering in 2003 from the University of Mumbai (Bombay).
I was born and raised in the beautiful city of Mumbai (Bombay).
Fun Links!
Useful academic/research links