The International Association for Cryptologic Research has selected a paper co-authored by Nicholas Spooner, assistant professor of computer science in the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science, for its 2026 Theory of Cryptography Conference (TCC) Test of Time Award.
First given in 2015, the TCC Test of Time Award recognizes outstanding papers that have made a lasting contribution to the theory of cryptography and beyond. The award will be given Nov. 12 at the 2026 TCC meeting, held in New York City.
Spooner co-authored the selected paper, "Interactive Oracle Proofs," with Eli Ben-Sasson, the CEO of Starkware, and Alessandro Chiesa, associate professor at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. He presented the paper at TCC in 2016.
"It has been so gratifying to see this work, which came out of my master’s thesis, become the basis for so much exciting progress by the whole community," Spooner said.
The paper introduced interactive oracle proofs, a new type of proof system that combines the advantages of interaction and local checking, and showed how to transform them into an efficient and secure “non-interactive” proof – requiring a single message instead of a back-and-forth conversation. Furthermore, their method improved existing techniques for "zero-knowledge" proofs, which reveal no extra information beyond their validity. Overall, the work provides new theoretical foundations and practical improvements for building secure, efficient proof systems.
Spooner joined the Cornell Bowers faculty in 2024. Previously, he was an assistant professor at the University of Warwick, a visiting assistant professor at NYU, and a postdoctoral researcher at Boston University. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, and a master's degree from ETH Zürich.
Patricia Waldron is a writer for the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science.
