Alessandro Sforzin

Programming Languages

• Main: Go

• Learning: Rust

• Previous Experience: C, JavaScript, Python

Tools

• Containers: Docker, Kubernetes

• Observability: Grafana, Prometheus

• Storage: AWS S3, LevelDB, Pebble, Postgres

Informal Systems

Senior Software Engineer • CometBFT Team • Jul, 2024 — present

Maintaining and improving the Go implementation of CometBFT, a distributed, Byzantine fault-tolerant, deterministic consensus algorithm.

Consensys

Lead Go Engineer • Linea Team • Oct, 2023 — Mar, 2024

• Lead Go developer of Linea's zkEVM rollup, an Ethereum L2 solution handling over 36.5M transactions with 3.7M active users.
• Responsible for defining and executing a roadmap to reduce tech debt: led the refactoring of legacy code, established documentation best practices, wrote internal wikis, set code style guides to write readable and idiomatic Go
• Worked with DevOps and SRE teams to deploy software in production Kubernetes clusters and debug deployment issues; wrote Helm charts as well.

NEC Laboratories Europe

Software Engineer • System Security Group • Jul, 2020 — Jan, 2023

• Led teams of up to 3 people as the lead engineer on several blockchain software projects, delivering all projects as a CLI client interfacing with a containerized (REST) API server. Designed, developed, and tested backend and application layers for each project, resulting in successful implementation of, among others, the following solutions:
  • Implemented a privacy-preserving solution for storing users’ biometric data on public clouds.
  • Developed an NFT-based marketplace that enabled secure and transparent transactions
  • Used graph algorithms to detect and solve network bottlenecks, optimizing network performance.
  • Developed an application layer of a supply-chain that reduced both time and costs for dispute resolution by 75%.
• Lead engineer of CyberSec4Europe, leading up to 25 EU-based organizations to design, implement, and test advanced cybersecurity prototypes. Oversaw engineering roadmaps and documentation deliverables for each project, resulting in successful completion and deployment of solutions that enhanced security measures.
• Mentored interns by planning milestones, reviewing their code, and helping them become autonomous in translating requirements into concrete implementations.
• Responsible for the infrastructure and security of the IT equipment—a cluster of ~20 servers—of the group.

Technical Project Manager • System Security Group • 2018 — 2020

• Worked in a team of 3 to design the system architecture for handling passenger streams in airports securely. The design was integrated into the Star Alliance Biometrics Platform.
• Designed and implemented a secure method for optimizing Bitcoin's disk storage that achieved up to 95% reduction in disk storage footprint
  • Conducted statistical analyses of Bitcoin's transaction spending trends and data fields distribution to develop the solution.
  • Developed a parser to decode Bitcoin's data format and edit its data as needed.
• Secured research funding for the group and planned technical contributions for research projects.
• Managed budgets and led distributed teams of 8-10 organizations to successfully execute research projects, ensuring on-time and on-budget delivery of high-quality solutions.

Junior Software Engineer • System Security Group • 2016 — 2018

Designed and developed NEC enterprise blockchain with a 3-person team, resulting in a reliable platform used in all NEC commercial and research blockchain-based software. Contributed to microservices architecture, backend API design, and implemented both APIs and client web app.

Delegated Off-Chain Payments Using Cryptocurrencies

Sebastien Andreina • Ghassan Karame • Alessandro Sforzin • Maja Schwarz

Secure and Transparent Pruning for Blockchains

Ghassan Karame • Alessandro Sforzin

Method and Distributed Ledger System for Supporting Identity Management of Travelers in an Airport

Sebastien Andreina • Ghassan Karame • Alessandro Sforzin

Method for Secure Ledger Distribution and Computer System using Secure Distributed Ledger Technology

Ghassan Karame • Wenting Li • Alessandro Sforzin

On the Storage Overhead of Proof-of-Work Blockchains

Alessandro Sforzin • Matteo Maso • Claudio Soriente • Ghassan Karame

Proceedings of the 5th IEEE International Conference on Blockchain (Blockchain 2022)

Towards Scalable and Private Industrial Blockchains

Wenting Li • Alessandro Sforzin • Sergey Fedorov • Ghassan Karame

Proceedings of the ACM Workshop on Blockchain, Cryptocurrencies, and Contracts (BCC '17')

Raspberry Pi IDS - A Fruitful Intrusion Detection System for IoT

Alessandro Sforzin • Felix Gomez Marmol • Mauro Conti • Jens-Matthias Bohli

Proceedings of the 13th IEEE International Conference on Advanced and Trusted Computing (ATC '16)

NEC Research Award

NEC Corporation • 2018

NEC Best Patent Award

NEC Corporation • 2017

Foundations of Security Analysis and Design (FOSAD)

Summer School • 2016

University of Padua

M.Sc. in Computer Science • 2015

Thesis supervisors: Félix Gómez Mármol, Mauro Conti

Technical University of Denmark

Exchange Student, Erasmus Program • 2012

University of Padua

B.Sc. in Computer Science • 2010