Samuel Judson

sam@sjudson.com

I am Head of zkVM Engineering at Nexus, where I work on verifiable computation and its applications to transparent and accountable computing. I also occasionally write humor.

I received a doctorate from the Department of Computer Science at Yale University, where I was advised by Ruzica Piskac. My work in both research and industry has focused on the intersection of computer science with law and policy, with a common thread of finding new ways to apply formal methods and cryptography in furtherance of the principled governance of technology. Concretely, I have worked on accountability for algorithmic decision making through descriptive program analysis, as well as on privacy-preserving formal methods and verifiable computation.

For my graduate research I received a National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellowship from the Office of Naval Research (ONR). Before that I received my undergraduate degree from Marlboro College, advised by Jim Mahoney and Matt Ollis, where my Plan of Concentration focused on cryptographic authentication.


dblp | scholar | github


Research Publications & Preprints

(*equal contribution)

  1.    On Heuristic Models, Assumptions, and Parameters [acm dl] [pdf]

    Samuel Judson and Joan Feigenbaum


    JRC, 2025.


       also arXiv.2201.07413 [arxiv] [pdf]

  2.    Striving Towards Non-Interference with Constitutive Practices [crcl] [pdf]

    Samuel Judson


    JCRCL, 2025.


       invited reply to Constitutive Practices of Liberal Legal Orders as Normative Limits on Automation of U.S. Administrative Processes

  3.    soid: A Tool for Legal Accountability for Automated Decision Making [springer] [pdf]

    Samuel Judson, Matthew Elacqua, Filip Cano, Timos Antonopoulos, Bettina Könighofer,


         Scott J. Shapiro, and Ruzica Piskac


    CAV, 2024.

  4.    'Put the Car on the Stand': SMT-based Oracles for Investigating Decisions [acm dl] [pdf]

    Samuel Judson, Matthew Elacqua, Filip Cano, Timos Antonopoulos, Bettina Könighofer,


         Scott J. Shapiro, and Ruzica Piskac


    CSLAW, 2024.


         also arXiv.2305.05731 [arxiv] [pdf]

  5.    Ou: Automating the Parallelization of Zero-Knowledge Protocols [acm dl] [pdf]

    Yuyang Sang*, Ning Luo*, Samuel Judson, Ben Chaimberg, Timos Antonopoulos, Xiao Wang,


         Ruzica Piskac, and Zhong Shao


    CCS, 2023.


         also Cryptology ePrint Archive Report 2023/657 [eprint] [pdf]

  6.    Formal XAI via Syntax-Guided Synthesis [springer] [pdf]

    Katrine Bjørner*, Samuel Judson*, Filip Cano, Drew Goldman, Nicholas Shoemaker,


         Ruzica Piskac, and Bettina Könighofer


    AISoLA, 2023.


  7.    Analyzing Intentional Behavior in Autonomous Agents Under Uncertainty [ijcai] [pdf]

    Filip Cano Córdoba, Samuel Judson, Timos Antonopoulos, Katrine Bjørner, Nicholas Shoemaker,


         Scott J. Shapiro, Ruzica Piskac, and Bettina Könighofer


    IJCAI, 2023.


         also arXiv.2307.01532 [arxiv] [pdf]

  8.    ppSAT: Towards Two-Party Private SAT Solving [usenix] [pdf]

    Ning Luo, Samuel Judson, Timos Antonopoulos, Ruzica Piskac, and Xiao Wang


    USENIX Security, 2022.


         also Cryptology ePrint Archive Report 2021/1584 [eprint] [pdf]

  9.    Privacy Preserving CTL Model Checking through Oblivious Graph Algorithms [acm dl] [pdf]

    Samuel Judson, Ning Luo, Timos Antonopoulos, and Ruzica Piskac


    WPES@CCS, 2020.


Theses



  1.    (Private) Formal Methods for Rigorously Governable Systems

    Doctoral Dissertation, Yale University, 2024.

  2.    Authentication: Techniques and Theory

    Plan of Concentration (Undergraduate Thesis), Marlboro College, 2016.