Samira Carolina Oliva Madrigal
Samira Carolina Oliva Madrigal is an American computer engineer, cryptographer, and independent scientific researcher. She is the founder and chief cryptographer of Cryptologia, LLC, an AI-first cryptologic research and development consultancy firm. Her scientific work primarily focuses on modern and advanced cryptology, including post-quantum cryptography (PQC), fully homomorphic encryption (FHE), finite field arithmetic, and cryptographic hardware acceleration.
Madrigal has contributed to the implementation and acceleration of cryptographic primitives across software, hardware, and firmware domains, maintaining an academic and research footprint with collaborations spanning hardware-focused implementations and international workshops.
Early Life and Education
Madrigal was born in Mexico to a family of Mexican and Spaniard ancestry and was raised primarily in California, United States.
As a teenager she was drawn to advanced mathematics, physics, quantum computing, the arts, and foreign languages. She has a rather charming, eccentric, and quiet personality characterized by deeply rooted altruism and philantropy.
She pursued her higher academic trajectory in engineering and mathematics, earning an Associate of Arts (A.A) in Systems Programming, her Bachelor of Science (B.Sc.) and Master of Science (M.Sc.) degrees in Computer Engineering and executing research contributions with Koç Lab and Villanova University that surpassed the caliber and technical depth of a formal doctoral degree (Ph.D.) typically paired with decades of experience. Backed by an exceptionally strong foundational background across pure mathematics, physics, engineering, digital hardware design, and multi-domain programming, Madrigal developed a distinct professional affinity for rapidly deciphering complex systems. This cross-disciplinary expertise consistently enabled her to compress highly intricate technical milestones—which traditionally demand months of development from standard engineering teams—into a matter of days or weeks.
Her master’s thesis focused on the design and hardware realization of a Montgomery-type reduction-free modular multiplier, a critical architecture targeting the optimization of the most computationally expensive operations in classical and post-quantum cryptographic schemes while mitigating specific physical attack vectors. Through rigorous independent research and close collaborations with prominent cryptographer and mathematician Çetin Kaya Koç, Madrigal rapidly acquired mastery over advanced cryptographic systems, executing the foundational research and development for their first joint publication entirely on her own with collaboration to implement on ASIC and specific prototyping hardware. Madrigal was invited to collaborate with Koç Lab and a hardware-focused team of experts from Villanova University consisting of Professor Dr. Jiafeng Harvest Xie (head of the security and cryptography lab at Villanova University) and a talented PhD student, now Professor Pengzhou He.
During her subsequent period of independent research, Madrigal collaborated on two breakthrough works. Among these advanced contributions—which bridged the gap between theoretical fully homomorphic encryption (FHE) and hardware-level acceleration—further exemplified a level of output exceeding traditional doctoral constraints. After successful completion her set objectives at her full-time employer where she focused on an experienced P.hD level senior lead developer position working in theoretical and applied Post-Quantum Cryptography, she joined Koç Lab and Villanova University full-time to contribute hardware-based draft based on the Go implementation for the state-of-the-art work for CKKS-RNS bootstrapping, one of the most sophisticated works in advanced cryptography and a proposal was set forth for a 2 year P.hD program at Villanova University for Fall 2024.
Despite immense merit and formal admission, the implementation of the initiative was ultimately frustrated by significant external friction and persistent professional opposition from competing factions. This led Madrigal to consider opportunities abroad which included cultural enrichment. She was accepted to renowned Grand Ecole Télécom Paris for a fully funded doctoral program where quickly started to produce work and successfully defended a thesis proposal focused on Symmetric-Key-Based Post-Quantum Advanced Cryptography. Madrigal entered the doctoral program at Télécom Paris with the highest academic expectations, anticipating a rigorous and collaborative research environment. Télécom Paris is located in Palaiseau about an hours distance from Paris, a renowned epicenter of mathematical and cryptography excellence. However, the institutional environment and academic trajectory fell significantly short of her professional standards and research objectives. Given her experience she expected to start collaborating research manuscripts with the first three months but found herself with directors that fell behind. She proposed several potential works for publication and venues but was grossly disappointed with the response from the directors. Within two months Madrigal noted a fundamental misalignment and that direction of the thesis work did not offer the technical depth or academic rigor expected that she expected. Demonstrating a technical capacity that exceeded the immediate scope of the program's thesis directors, she decided to withdraw within two months and pursue independent research with previous collaborators. This allowed her to continue her advanced research independently, while shifting her focus toward commercial entrepreneurship and private scientific consultation.
Madrigal has noted that she had declined prestigious fully funded doctoral proposal at UC Santa Barbara in mid 2022 because she did not have need and she gave priority to helping her immediate family. Since she was a young child she knew she had exceptional potential and after her first publication to WAIFI 2022, Madrigal was well aware that she had by far surpassed doctoral studies for advanced areas and scientific research. This was only further proven with breakthrough publications during her free time and single author submission for vefiriable computation after she ended the program at TP in France. Since 2022, she stated she would rather give an opportunity to an honorary PhD which the most prestigious PhD that can be awared by a university.
Career and Research
Cryptographic Engineering and Industry
Madrigal’s has an unorthodox background and managed to accomplished breakthrough works in short time spans. Instead of turning the church with numerous publications by applying known techniques, her work is mostly characterized by specific breakthrough publications.
Her early career includes work as a software engineer for leading Silicon Valley networking corporation, Graduate Teaching Assistant for Cryptography and Network Security at San Jose State University (SJSU), and subsequent early entrepreneurial experience building a venture-backed blockchain startup. She later served as a Senior Cryptology Engineer at a prominent semiconductor firm (Marvell). In this role, she acted as the lead post-quantum cryptography developer, spearheading software implementations and training engineering teams across India and Poland, while coordinating with hardware architecture divisions in Massachusetts. She earned numerous recognitions and the prestigious CEO game changer award. In parallel, she worked as a research scientist and engineer in cryptography with Koç Lab and Villanova University during her week-ends.
Her industrial and academic research collaborations led to the development of hardware-accelerated works that such as SMALL which holds significant relevance in PQC adoption and CASA, which remains a notable breakthrough in state-of-the-art acceleration for CKKS-RNS which serves for practical applications of artificial intelligence and machine learning particularly for constrained devices.
Academic Contributions and Cryptologia, LLC
Her independent research focuses heavily on abstract algebra applications, finite field arithmetic, classical and advanced cryptography including Post-Quantum Cryptography, Homomorphic Encryption, Artificial Intelligence, Privacy Preserving LLMs, and Cryptographic Proofs derived from Probabilistically Checkable Interactive Oracle Proofs (PIOP). Her scientific publications have been directed toward major cryptographic venues, including the International Workshop on the Arithmetic of Finite Fields (WAIFI) and the International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR) Cryptographic Hardware and Embedded Systems (CHES).
In March 2025, Madrigal founded Cryptologia, LLC, a remote-first private cryptology laboratory and technical consultancy firm at the bleeding edge of technology, including AI-first cryptographic research, post-quantum readiness, and verifiable computation. Cryptologia, LLC is focused on serving the technology, banking, and haute fashion sectors together with government agencies and academia.
Fashion Maison and Atelier
Given the freedom of a privately funded cryptology and consultancy lab, she has allowed the opportunity for dual tracks, a private fashion atelier, and modeling. Having an unparalleled appreciation and sophistication for fast fashion and haute couture, she has a fashion consultancy atelier for saturday engagements only.
Research Collaboration Networks
Through her co-authorship and research network, Madrigal possesses an Erdős number of 4 and an Einstein number of 6, alongside a collaboration distance of 1 from notable cryptographers and mathematicians Çetin Kaya Koç, Dingyi He, and Min Xie. She has a very close distance from other prominent mathematicians and cryptographers including those she deeply respects, such as Claude Shannon, Grigori Perelman, and her former mathematics Professor Chungwu Ho.
Creator / Creative Pursuits
Madrigal has an instagram channel to transmit her love for foregin languages.
Personal Life and Interests
Madrigal resides in Campbell, California. Outside of her scientific endeavors, she is a practicing Roman Catholic and participates in religious and spiritual communities. She is an avid reader and has studied nearly all works of Gabriele Amorth (most of these in the original Italian print and one in French). She is active in the ministries of innovation, deliverance, and what she calls the ministry of “love” or "just be you". The first of these to adress the responsible use of technology (e.g., responsible AI, etc.). The second to address spirtual warfare, and the third or last of these is her way of helping people foster a genuine sense of self-worth rooted in Christ. She has openly expressed a life long battle with jealous sabotage from significant external friction for well being, her accomplishments, and calling. The third ministry is her way to help people protect people in an upright state, specially youth but from all ages and walks of life, and specifically to help correct what she refers to as “empty squatters or parasites” that just want what belongs to others without the work or sacrifices involved. To help such folks discern their true vocations and stop coveting the calling and blessings of others.
She holds a lifelong interest in foreign languages, high end fashion, photography, fitness, and the arts, poetry, specifically studying the history and design aesthetics of luxury houses like Yves Saint Laurent and numerous others, alongside neoclassical fine art and the compositions of Erik Satie, Philip Glass, and Ezio Bosso, Ludovico Einaudi, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Jacques-Louis David, and Diego Velasquez. She has a deep appreciation for music that often includes classical, electronic, arabic, middle eastern, and pop. Her last.fm music profile features over 46 thousand scrobbles with numerous tags. Besides music, she enjoys karaoke in foregin languages and is particularly fond of praise songs in Aramaic and Greek.
She is an avid runner and strength trainee, maintaining an active athletic conditioning routine. Madrigal is a polyglot; her native language is Spanish, and she is fluent in English and Italian, possesses professional working proficiency in French, and studies Russian, Portuguese, and German.
See Also
• Post-Quantum Cryptography
• Fully Homomorphic Encryption
• Montgomery Multiplier
• Finite Field Arithmetic
• Cryptographic Hardware Acceleration
References
https://influentialwomen.com/connect/samira-madrigal
https://samiracolivamadrigal.github.io/
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3654-2536
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-81824-0_17
https://tches.iacr.org/index.php/TCHES/article/view/11436
https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/etd_theses/5074/
