Angelos Pelecanos

I am a Ph.D. student in Computer Science at UC Berkeley, fortunate to be co-advised by Prof. Shafi Goldwasser and Prof. John Wright.

My research interests lie broadly in theoretical computer science. Recently, I have been thinking about cryptography and quantum computing.

In Spring 2022 I received an M.Eng. degree from MIT, where I was lucky to work under the supervision of Prof. Vinod Vaikuntanathan. I graduated with a bachelors degree in Computer Science and Engineering and in Mathematics in Spring 2021 from the same institution. I am grateful for the mentorship of Prof. Virginia Vassilevska Williams during my undergraduate studies.

My email is apelecan at berkeley dot edu.

Publications

Mixed state tomography reduces to pure state tomography
Angelos Pelecanos, Jack Spilecki, Ewin Tang, John Wright
Manuscript 2026
[pdf]
The debiased Keyl’s algorithm: a new unbiased estimator for full state tomography
Angelos Pelecanos, Jack Spilecki, John Wright
29th Annual Quantum Information Processing Conference (QIP 2026)
[pdf]
Beating full state tomography for unentangled spectrum estimation
Angelos Pelecanos, Xinyu Tan, Ewin Tang, John Wright
37th ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms (SODA 2026)
[pdf]
How Fast Does the Inverse Walk Approximate a Random Permutation?
Vishesh Jain, Tianren Liu, Clayton Mizgerd, Angelos Pelecanos, Stefano Tessaro, Vinod Vaikuntanathan
Manuscript 2025
[pdf]
More Efficient Approximate k-wise Independent Permutations from Random Reversible Circuits via log-Sobolev Inequalities
Lucas Gretta, William He, Angelos Pelecanos
36th ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms (SODA 2025)
[pdf]
On the Computational Hardness of Quantum One-Wayness
Bruno Cavalar, Eli Goldin, Matthew Gray, Peter Hall, Yanyi Liu, Angelos Pelecanos
Quantum 9 (2025)
[pdf]
Classical vs Quantum Advice under Classically-Accessible Oracle
Xingjian Li, Qipeng Liu, Angelos Pelecanos, Takashi Yamakawa
15th Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science (ITCS 2024)
[pdf]
Layout Graphs, Random Walks, and the t-wise Independence of SPN Block Ciphers
Tianren Liu, Angelos Pelecanos, Stefano Tessaro, Vinod Vaikuntanathan
43rd International Cryptology Conference (CRYPTO 2023)
[pdf] [code]
Non-Asymptotic t-wise Independence of Substitution-Permutation Networks
MIT MEng Thesis
[pdf]
Erratum The main theorem of Section 4 (O(t)-round MiMC is t-wise independent) is not known to be true.

Activities

Education

Ph.D. in Computer Science, 2022 - Present
University of California, Berkeley
M.Eng. in Computer Science and Engineering, 2021 - 2022
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
B.Sc. in Computer Science and Engineering, 2017 - 2021
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
B.Sc. in Mathematics, 2017 - 2021
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Talks

More Efficient Approximate k-wise Independent Permutations from Random Reversible Circuits via log-Sobolev Inequalities
MIT CIS Seminar, Cambridge, Fall 2024.
On the t-wise Independence of Block Ciphers
CMU Theory Lunch, Pittsburgh, Fall 2024. [slides] [video]
Classical vs Quantum Advice and Proofs under Classically-Accessible Oracle
Quantum Complexity Workshop, Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing, Spring 2024. [video]
ITCS 2024, Berkeley, Spring 2024.
Quantum Brainstorming Session, Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing, Spring 2023.
Layout Graphs, Random Walks, and the t-wise independence of SPN block ciphers
CRYPTO 2023, Santa Barbara, Summer 2023
NYU Crypto Reading Group, Fall 2023.

Teaching

Advanced Algorithms (MIT 6.854/18.415J)
Teaching Assistant: Fall 2021
Design and Analysis of Algorithms (MIT 6.046/18.410J)
Teaching Assistant: Fall 2020, Spring 2021

Professional Experience

Hudson River Trading
Algorithm Developed Intern, Summer 2021
Citadel
Software Engineering Intern, Summer 2019
Tech Square Trading
Quantitative Trading Intern, Winter 2019
QuantCo
Sofware Engineering Intern, Summer 2018